WISCONSIN BLUE BOOK 1989-1990


1832 until the federal government again moved them, this time to the eastern
shore of Lake Winnebago. Thus, long before George Lawe platted the first
townsite, the Grand Kakalin had a lengthy record of Indian-French
occupation.
   With the initial platting of Kaukauna in 1850, a new era began. One year
 later Kaukauna turned into a construction boom town when workers began
 building the dam and locks at the rapids as part of the long discussed Fox-
 Wisconsin waterway. For a few years in the early 1850s, the village
 mushroomed with houses and stores to accommodate 500 construction
 workers. This temporary prosperity vanished when the improvements at the
 Grand Kakalin were completed and the workers left. Depression spread
 across the nation in the fall of 1857, severely dampening Wisconsin's general
 growth. The influx of population, farm development, and canal traffic so
 optimistically predicted failed to materialize. With the coming of the Civil
 War, times improved as demand for wheat and wool inflated produce prices
 and encouraged agricultural development. Kaukauna revived and the com-
 ing of the railroad stimulated its growth, providing an access to a broader
 market and creating construction jobs. The Chicago and Northwestern
 reached town in 1862.
   By 1870 Fox River waterpower turned the stones of 2 large flour mills
and
 furnished the energy for 2 barrel stave mills and for sawmills which made
 railroad ties and such finished wood products as sashes, doors, and blinds.
 When in the early 1880s a second rail line was built to Kaukauna and located
 its repair and maintenance facilities there, 200 families came to supply
the
 work force. In the same decade the construction of power canals enabled
 industry to harness the energy of the Fox more readily.
   In 1872, Colonel H.A. Frambach and his brother built Kaukauna's first
 paper mill, the Eagle Mill, utilizing the ground wood process for making
pa-
 per stock. It was small and experimental, but it worked and was a harbinger
 of Kaukauna's and the lower Fox River Valley's industrial future. In 1886
 Frambach and Joseph Vilas of Manitowoc built a huge stone 3-storied paper
 mill, the Badger, another pioneer in production technology. By then pulp-
 and paper mills had literally mushroomed at Kaukauna with 8 in operation
 besides the Badger. Oscar Thilmany and Norman Brokaw came to be known
 as innovators in Kaukauna's pulp and paper industry. Thilmany Pulp and
 Paper, which traces its beginnings to 1883, operates today, the only survivor
 of 7 such Kaukauna firms in business in 1900.
   By the turn of the century the pattern of Kaukauna's industry for decades
to come was clear. Pulp and paper production was by far the most impor-
tant. Another segment processed the products of surrounding farms, and yet
another which has grown significantly in importance utilized metal. Three
metal-based industries are important employers today. Kaukauna's only
brewery closed in 1947 after almost a century of production.
  The city, the "Lion of the Fox" as turn of the century promoters
liked to
call it, has grown from a population of a few hundred in 1860 to an estimated
12,240 in 1988. People of widely diverse origins have provided the leadership
and the labor as Melanie Betz and Carolyn Kellogg note in their Final Re-
port: Intensive Resources Survey City of Kaukauna, Wisconsin. "The people


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