This week begins a two-part reflection on the Owen-Withee Area History Series as it reaches a milestone I never imagined when I began writing in 2020: 250 weekly stories. What started as an effort to write a few stories has become a record of people, places, and memories that might otherwise have faded. Part 1 looks back at how the journey began and why it has mattered. Part 2 will consider where the series stands now and what may still lie ahead.
This series would never have started without Nathan LePage, then editor of the local weekly newspaper, the O-W Enterprise. For two or three years, Nathan urged me to write a weekly history column. I kept saying no. I did not think I had the time, and I did not want the commitment. He was persistent—persistent enough to visit me twice at my home nearly 300 miles away. My first two stories were inspired by donations he made to my historical collections. So before looking back on 250 stories, I need to say this: thank you, Nathan.
I write because history disappears quietly. A school closes. A farm changes hands. A hotel burns or is torn down. A logging tool is forgotten in a shed. Nobody means to erase history, but if nobody gathers it, labels it, writes it down, and shares it, that is what happens.
My own local roots reach back to 1877, when my great-grandfather came from Aroostook County, Maine, to the Wisconsin pineries along the Black River. His covered-wagon journey took four months. He arrived in a place of white pine, logging camps, and uncertain survival, joining the lumbering story that helped shape northern Clark County before Owen and Withee became the communities we know.
For much of my younger life, I was eager to leave. I graduated from Owen-Withee High School in 1968 and, like many young people from small rural towns, wanted a wider world. I found it through college, travel, and a career far from the dairy farm where I grew up. But age changes the view. The place I once wanted to escape became the place I wanted to preserve.
That is one reason these stories have ranged widely: dairy farming, Indian lands along the Black River, old hotels, logging, Civilian Conservation Corps camps, rural schools, maple syrup, and more. Some stories are about big events. Others are about ordinary things that once filled everyday life. Both matter.
Since 2020, all of us have lived through the disruption of COVID. In my own life, there have also been seasons of illness, medical monitoring, and family caregiving. I do not mention that for attention, but because it is part of the truth behind the writing. These columns were written in the middle of real life.
Maybe that is why local history has come to mean even more. When the present feels uncertain, the past reminds us that earlier generations also endured hardship. They crossed long distances, survived illness, economic trouble, and war. They kept going. Their stories place our own times in a larger human story.
I am especially grateful to readers who have followed along, clipped columns, shared memories, corrected details, sent photos, and told me to keep going. Some still live in the Owen-Withee area. Many others, like me, moved away but never fully left. I have also been encouraged by Mennonite families, now an important part of the community. Their interest reminds me that local history belongs not only to old families, but to everyone who chooses to call a place home.
The printed newspaper reaches one audience, but the digital archive reaches another. The Wisconsin Newspaper Association, a nonprofit newspaper trade organization, helps digitize and preserve this newspaper in a permanent online database available free of charge to everyone. Because these columns are preserved and indexed, a story written for this week’s paper may be found years from now by a grandchild, genealogist, student, or someone trying to understand where they came from. That is a powerful reason to keep writing.
Two hundred fifty stories do not complete the history of Owen-Withee, Clark County, or the Black River country. They barely open the door. But they prove something important: local history is still alive when people care enough to save it, share it, and pass it along. In Part 2, I will look beyond the number 250 to what these stories have taught me, what readers have contributed, and why more pieces of the past are still waiting to be found.