thing from all members of our family. Anyway, I
was out there on this morning piling tobacco. My
father was hauling the speared lath-tobacco. He
came back from a trip with the team and tobacco
rack and he had a very sad message. My father al-
Inost worshipped William McKinley. They had just
gotten word that William McKinley had been shot."
    The pioneer's first crop was usually Indian corn.
When he had chosen his land and built some kind of
house, he planted "sod corn." After making cuts
with an ax in the upturned sod for the corn hills, he
dropped the seeds into the hills and stepped on them,
pressing the earth down into the cut. Surprisingly,
in a first year many farmers got a fair crop, which
supplied roasting ears, meal, and grain for oxen or
horses. On the new farmlands, corn was not as popu-
lar for flour as wheat, which was the crop the settlers
tried to get into the ground as soon as possible.
    For a long while the climate was not regarded
as favorable for corn, but experience and science
combined to improve it as a Wisconsin crop. As
dairying developed, so did corn growing; on the lands
of southern Wisconsin, the dry prairies, and the allu-
vial lands, corn was more reliable than wheat. Oats
and hay also became vital crops as the dairy industry
grew.
    The five outstanding corn-growing counties in
1880 were Rock, Lafayette, Green, Grant, and Dane,
with Walworth, Iowa, Dodge, and Columbia not far
behind.
    But Wisconsin was good country for growing
many kinds of crops. Cranberries, though never
grown on the scale of corn or even wheat, deserve
note.
    Bogs and marshes were left by the two great
lake systems that the retreating glaciers created:
Lake Wisconsin throughout the central parts of the
state, and Lake Oshkosh, which included Columbia,
Marquette, Green Lake, Waushara, Waupaca, Winne-
bago, and Outagamie counties. Early settlers in the
Berlin area found marshes red with tons of cranber-
ries, and commercial production began there about
1850. The first people to harvest cranberries, how-
ever, were Indians; they called the fruit puck-a-non-
con.
    By 1871 white people were controlling the cran-
berry industry. The largest crop was in 1872 when
35,000 barrels were shipped over the St. Paul Rail-
way from Berlin. The industry near Berlin dwindled
out about 1900. Use of alkaline water from the Fox
River was said to be one reason. The land became
unproductive and only a few acres were left in pro-
duction.


Cranberry culture moved northwest, and new       Young couples came to the
land with hope.


41