EXHIBITS: Mark Van Ells on Wisconsin Ethnic Settlement Trail
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 06:18:21 -0500
H-Ethnic Review
Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement Trail
Review by Mark D. Van Ells
Wisconsin Veterans Museum
mvanells@students.wisc.edu
Driving through the countryside of eastern Wisconsin one is likely to
remark on its "all American" appearance: dairy cows grazing in rich green pastures, oceans of corn, sleepy cities and towns with tree-lined, flag-draped streets. But when one looks closely, another landscape emerges. A diversity of immigrant groups, predominantly from northern and western Europe, has settled along the western shore of Lake Michigan over the past 150 years, each leaving its own mark on the region's urban and rural areas. Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement Trail (WEST) identifies many original areas of ethnic settlement and guides travelers though these historically significant environs.
Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement Trail is a series of 19 separate motor and
walking tours covering more than 200 miles. Twelve tours focus on specific
ethnic groups: Germans (3), Poles (2), Luxembourgers, Dutch, Irish,
French-Canadians, Bohemians, Belgians, and Swedes. Many of these group
specific tours contain sites related to other ethnic communities. Irish
landmarks dot the area, for example, and the Swedish tour is in essence a
"Scandinavian tour" as it also encompasses Norwegian and Icelandic
settlements. Six tours focus on distinctive ethnic neighborhoods, largely
in the Milwaukee area. Each tour contains a variety of landmarks that
feature the region's immigrant and ethnic history, such as museums,
churches, and characteristic
architectural and archaeological sites. Traversing the region is the Green Bay
Ethnic Settlement Trail, which follows the original Chicago to Green Bay
highway that guided many immigrants to the area. The ethnic trail is in
many ways a work in progress. The WEST staff is currently planning Native
American, Norwegian, Danish, Italian and Swiss tours.
The settlement trail grew out of the Heritage Tourism Program of the
National Trust for Historic Preservation. Launched in 1989, the program
seeks to harness the growing tourism industry for the promotion of history
by forming partnerships between local
businesses and historical agencies. The Wisconsin ethnic trail was one of
the Heritage Tourism Program's 16 pilot projects. In 1992 the Wisconsin's
Ethnic Settlement Trail became a permanent program, jointly sponsored by the
National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Wisconsin Division of
Tourism. The ethnic trail is one of four Heritage Tourism programs in
Wisconsin, the others being the Fox-Wisconsin Rivers Heritage Corridor, the
Frank Lloyd Wright Heritage Trail, and the Lac du Flambeau Chippewa Indian
Reservation. The project staff publishes a guidebook for the trail
(discussed below) and a newspaper to keep travelers up to date on many
ethnic festivals,
project news, and other matters.
Overall, Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement Trail is a splendid achievement in
historic preservation and public education. However, the project has a few
important
shortcomings. Most disappointing is the _Visitor's Guide to Wisconsin's
Ethnic Settlement Trail_, the 61-page traveler's handbook. The booklet
contains a map, historical sketch, and a list of recommended sites for each
tour, as well as lists of cultural societies, restaurants, and lodging
facilities in the region. The guidebook is indispensable to the traveler,
yet it suffers from some serious flaws. For one, the interpretive text
requires much more editing. The possessive adjective "its" is spelled
"it's" almost half the time, for example. The maps of individual tours are
also difficult to follow, particularly in urban areas. WEST travelers
would be wise to supplement the visitor's guide with more detailed maps or
a Wisconsin road atlas. In addition, the booklet sometimes does a poor job
of guiding travelers to the recommended sites. For example, the Bohemian
tour text mentions an "original Bohemian stump fence," but gives no more
precise of a location than "near [the village
of] Slovan."
Beyond such technicalities, the historical interpretation could me more sophisticated. Perhaps most noticeably, the discussion dwells too much on the positive. The narrative often devolves into affirmative ethnic stereotypes rather than substantive discussions of immigrant behavior. For example, the text describes Germans as having "frugal habits and industrious ways" (p. 40) but does not discuss how these characteristics might distinguish them from other groups. Simultaneously, the interpretation overlooks controversial or unpleasant aspects of American immigration and ethnic history. For example, the text for Milwaukee's Bay View neighborhood tour fails to mention the area's most notable historical event, the 1886 "Bay View Massacre" in which National Guard troops fired on a largely immigrant crowd protesting in favor of an eight-hour work day, killing five. Similarly, the text avoids such topics as Civil War draft resistance among some immigrants, the anti-German hysteria of World War I, and the circumstances surrounding the arrival of the Hmong refugees following the Vietnam War. Finally, the interpretation needs to give as much weight to the origins and history of recent immigrants groups, particularly Asians and Latinos, as it does to the older groups. In short, the guidebook text tells only part of Wisconsin's ethnic history.
Such criticism might seem excessive for a 61-page pamphlet. However, as a
visitor's introduction to the settlement trail the pamphlet must make an
impression of
authority and knowledge, a task it fails to accomplish in its present form.
Even at its
current length the work could present a more coherent discussion of the
ethnic experience in Wisconsin. A brief bibliography might make an
interesting and useful appendix. Indeed, Wisconsin ethnic communities have
been the subjects of some excellent historical monographs, such as Kathleen
Conzen's _Immigrant Milwaukee_, Joe William Trotter's _Black Milwaukee_, and
Jon Gjerde's _From Peasants to Farmers_. The WEST project staff should not
shy away from producing an informative and scholarly guidebook for their
otherwise excellent program. It is unlikely that the settlement trail will
draw travelers away from wax museums and amusement parks, but will instead
attract an altogether different kind of tourist, one who might appreciate a
more complex
historical interpretation. The project staff plans to issue updated
versions of the guidebook as the trail grows. One hopes the work will improve.
The combination of history and commerce on Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement
Trail is a qualified success. Most tours retain their focus on the ethnic
history of the area, and the food and lodging information contained in the
guidebook can be quite welcome to the weary heritage tourist. At times the
imperatives of tourism seem to intrude on the historical integrity of the
trail. The Racine and Kenosha County tours, for example, contain few sites
related specifically to ethnic groups, composed instead of local museums and
parks. Such instances are the exception rather than the rule, however.
More often than not the tours lead into remote areas without tourist
facilities where few nonresidents venture. Heritage Tourism may strike some
historians as a kind of "Disney's America" approach to historic
preservation, and this concern
is not unwarranted. If historians make decisions about the preservation of
historic
sites based on their usefulness as tourist attractions not only will
valuable segments of our national heritage be lost, but class, cultural, or
political considerations will probably determine what is lost. Heritage
tourism is a supplement to, not a substitute for, existing preservation
efforts. For the most part, Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement Trail
demonstrates how Heritage Tourism can work. Local businesses, historical and
cultural societies, and the cause of educating the public about history all
benefit from the WEST partnership.
Much about Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement Trail is an unqualified success.
The WEST team has done an impressive job of locating ethnic settlement
areas, cataloging
the remnants of those communities, and making this knowledge available to
the public. Among the settlements in the region are some of the most unique
in North America, including the largest colonies of Icelanders and
Luxembourgers in the United States. Some of the recommended museums on the
trail are among the finest in the nation, perhaps most notably the Milwaukee
Public Museum. The trail includes landmarks associated with prominent
persons in American and even world history, including the home of Socialist
Congressman Victor Berger and a school once attended by Golda Meier which
now bears her name. Other highlights include the oldest Turner Hall in the
United States and the village of St. Nazianz, founded by a communal German
Catholic sect in the 1860s.
The highlight of each tour for this reviewer was usually a church. Traditional
repositories of local culture, churches preserve more of local ethnic
culture than perhaps any other institutions in the region. Settlement trail
churches contain statues, paintings, and other artifacts brought from the
Old World, architecture reminiscent of the immigrants' homeland, and stained
glass windows in a variety of languages. This trail not only helps raise
public awareness of America's immigrant and
ethnic history, but it also has potential value for professional historians.
The impressive list of settlements alone might lead a scholar to worthwhile
sources.
Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement Trail reveals much about the state of ethnic America today. On the trail historians can observe first hand both the efficacy of the American melting pot and the persistence of ethnicity in American life. On the surface, much of the European immigrant cultures seem to have disappeared or devolved into a nostalgic remembrance of past ethnic ties. In the village of Cedar Grove, founded by Dutch immigrants in the 1840s, an electric windmill (built in 1968) buzzes in the town center and the sale of wooden shoes appears a staple of the local economy, even though the Dutch settlers probably never used such items with any frequency. However, a closer look shows that many in the region retain important fragments of their ethnic past. This reviewer amassed a considerable collection of ethnic newspapers, religious literature, and other ephemera while traveling on the settlement trail. A visit to a bakery or meat market demonstrates that many ethnic foodways persist. The fact that people in the American Midwest still offer prayers to Our Lady of Luxembourg (at least as implied by a flyer distributed in one church) suggests that many ethnic ways endure even among some of the region's earliest immigrant groups. Traveling the ethnic trail also shows that recent waves of newcomers, most notably African Americans, Asians, and Latinos, have formed communities not unlike those of the past, and often in areas abandoned by their European predecessors. In short, the trail shows ethnic Wisconsin to be both what it once was and what it is today.
The Wisconsin ethnic trail has two other notable strengths. First, it
underscores the threats posed to the preservation of ethnic landmarks and
other cultural
resources. The greater Milwaukee area provides perhaps the best example.
In the years since World War II many of the city's old ethnic neighborhoods
have been demolished for freeways and other urban "renewal" projects, while
many surviving landmarks exist in economically depressed and deteriorating
areas. On the edges of the city one sometimes finds suburban developments in
close proximity to historic churches, barns, and other sites. The public
awareness brought by WEST may help save some precious cultural resources
from demolition. Second, the trail adds a physical dimension to one's
understanding of American immigration and ethnic history. Just as visiting
a battlefield can provide insight into the conduct of war and the
experience of the combatants, traveling Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement Trail
can give historians a feeling for the daily lives of Wisconsin immigrants --
the summer heat, the winter cold, the richness of the terrain, the close
quarters of urban life -- that one can obtain in no other way.
One can travel Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement Trail in any number of ways,
from a methodical inspection of each tour to simply stopping at places of
interest. For those who might tour the settlement trail this reviewer
offers three traveler tips. First, one should plan ahead. Due to the
region's notorious climate many facilities are open only during the summer
months. In addition, many facilities are small and only open on rare
occasions, such as the museum in Freistadt (Wisconsin's first German
settlement), open July 4th and by appointment. Without proper planning, the
settlement trail might be a disappointing experience. Second, one should
make use of local historical and cultural societies. The WEST visitor's
guide provides only a
minimum of information for each tour. Local groups can provide literature,
maps, tours, and other helpful services that nicely supplement the WEST
guidebook. Finally,
visitors should be courteous and respectful of local residents, their
property, and their privacy. Many sites on the trail are privately owned and
occupied, and most of the recommended churches are active places of worship.
For more information about the project contact: Wisconsin's Ethnic
Settlement Trail, 510 Water Street, Sheboygan Falls, WI 53085, phone:
414/467-0636, fax: 414/467-0477.
Despite the shortcomings of its guidebook, the settlement trail furthers both the public's understanding of history and the preservation of Wisconsin's ethnic heritage. Leading to potential sources and attesting to the state of ethnic America today, the trail is of value to professional historians as well. In many ways Wisconsin's Ethnic Settlement Trail is a worthwhile adventure into America's immigration and ethnic history.
Mark D. Van Ells
mvanells@students.wisc.edu
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