Creeks. By 1907, the main ditch of the district was 
completed. In 1909, one of the biggest fires on 
record roared through Leola and ignited the peat of 
the ditchbanks. It was the kind of fire that Floyd 
Reid later remembered watching on a smoky 
summer's evening when an orange sun set over 
pale green crops in a black marshland field ringed 
by ditchbank peat glowing red. 
Fires were common on the marshes and the 
Leola marsh had "been largely burned over" prior 
to drainage in 1889. The difference was that, 
unlike natural marshes that flooded in the spring, a 
drained marsh stayed dry and was much more 
vulnerable to fire. Once ignited, peat could burn 
for months and only a heavy covering of snow 
could smother the flames and make winter the 
single season of the year when the marshes did not 
smell of burning earth. 
Unlike many other drainage districts in central 
Wisconsin, Leola remained solvent enough to pay 
the cost of its construction, but not enough to keep 
farmers on the land. Leola, along with Rome, 
Monroe and Big Flats, which did not have drain- 
age districts, lost population between 1900 and 
1910, with both Big Flats and Rome losing nearly 
one-third of the people living there in 1900. 
The optimistic spirit of the 1890s deflated 
even more in the 1920s, when the national agricul- 
tural depression hit hard at places like Adams 
County. About one of every six county farms went 
out of business in the '20s. Then the 1930s came 
 
and the county faced both an economic and 
environmental disaster. "I had five kids," Walter 
Helm recalled, "and I sold hogs for 2.5 cents a 
pound, eggs for 9 cents a dozen and potatoes for 
20 cents a bushel. I don't like to talk about the 
Depression." Those 20-cent potatoes were 
especially hard to take, since Helm had made as 
much as $7.00 a hundred for potatoes during 
World War I. 
After enduring the lowest agricultural prices 
on record in 1932, county farmers encountered one 
of the worst droughts on record in 1933. Rainfall 
recorded at the Hancock Research Station was 
nearly 10 inches below normal between January 
1933 and June 1934. In May, one of the first and 
largest of the transcontinental duststorms rolled 
out of the northern Great Plains states and into 
central Wisconsin. The droughted sands of Adams 
and neighboring counties blew out of fields and 
into drifts like snow. "The corn was just coming 
out of the ground," said Walter Helm, "when the 
dust just buried it." 
The May 1934 storm blew dust all the way to 
Washington D.C. where a weather bureau scientist 
concluded that "a continuation of a dust blanket of 
this magnitude would shortly result in ice-age 
conditions." In Adams County the storm was 
followed by hot weather and near-record tempera- 
tures until rain finally fell in June. By then, hay 
and oats were burned out with corn and potatoes 
severely set back. 
 
A dust storm 
rolls over afield 
in Dell Prairie in 
1924, a sample 
of the heavier 
"dusters" that 
blew over the 
county in the 
1930s. 
 
49