In Wisconsin: Kicking the Kickapoo Habit

By David Jackson

The village of Soldiers Grove (pop. 616), snugly settled in the white oak, pine and basswood hills of southern Wisconsin, is slowly coming awake again, like a patient after a successful heart transplant. In this case, the village is undergoing urban surgery. "Soldiers Grove's survival," boasts one resident, "has been a matter of gumption."

The town's business district, four square blocks of shops, bars and other enterprises, including a feed mill and a cheese factory, lay in the flood plain of the Kickapoo River. Five times in the past 75 years, the village was hit by devastating floods. After one, the citizens sent an arriving Red Cross contingent home. They would take care of themselves, they said. And they did. To thwart the rampaging river once and for all, they decided to pick up the whole business district and move it half a mile away and 55 ft. higher.

That idea, though, was slow to be accepted. "This is the little town that could. And it almost didn't," says Architect Tom Hirsch. Along with Ron Swiggum, who lost his meat-locker business in the last flood, Hirsch is the man most responsible for making the move possible. Together the two argued with fellow townsfolk, filled out forms, wrote letters, badgering the Government to move the downtown district from here to there.

The Government's traditional answer to the kind of flooding that bedeviled Soldiers Grove is to build a dam or a levee. Both, at one time or another, have been ordered for the Kickapoo. But in 1975, after environmentalists complained about pollution from the proposed construction, these projects were stalled. At about the same time, studies began to show that the projected dam would not fully protect Soldiers Grove--or the other towns downstream from it--despite a price tag that topped $50 million. The annual maintenance of a proposed $3.5 million levee system would have doubled property taxes. Staying put was ruled out because state and federal laws restricted growth funds to towns in flood-prone areas. Since the entire business district of Soldiers Grove lay in the flood plain, the legislation was viewed by the inhabitants as a financial death warrant.

Even so, the idea of moving things like the post office and the bank away from the residential district disturbed older residents. Said Mabel Shepard, 79, who is ailing and confined to her home: "It's too far to go for groceries and the mail. I don't think it's a good idea." Mabel opposed the shift even though, back in 1951, she and her crippled daughter were pulled from their two-story house just before it lurched down the street, borne away on the current. Discussion raged. Some said another big flood might not come for 75 years. Others supported the idea of an expensive levee. It was the Kickapoo that had the last word. On the Fourth of July weekend in 1978, the river rose up and smashed through the valley, knocking down buildings, ruining crops and adding another glum watermark to the town's soggy history. Damage to the business district reached half a million dollars.

"That flood changed a lot of people's minds," says Hirsch. It also put the village in a catch-22 situation. President Carter obligingly declared Soldiers Grove part of a disaster area. But the town could not legally use disaster relief funds to rebuild on the flood plain. The only way out was to persuade the Federal Government to provide funds for relocation.

Swiggum and Hirsch lobbied hard. They also escorted Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire through the shattered area and convinced him that survival depended on Government help. Seven weeks later the Senator announced that $900,000 in discretionary funds had been pried loose from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help move some homes and businesses. Soldiers Grove was on its way.

Only 22 of the village's 212 homes had to be floodproofed or moved. But 39 of the village's 42 commercial buildings were affected. Now, 27 months and $1.1 million in construction bills later, seven new buildings stand on the freshly graded ridge. Richard Turk's cedar-paneled IGA market has been selling groceries again. And Denis Daniels' glass store just opened for business. Bill Nicholson's garage has started repairing cars. Because Soldiers Grove's planners decided that while rewriting the rules on flood avoidance they might as well make an energy statement too, the resulting cluster of buildings, full of rough-cut wood, glass and aluminum, already suggests a marriage of Danish modern and granola Gothic. The town's new business section faces south to let huge, sloping solar collectors gulp in the sun all day.

One businessman happy with the move is Turk, manager of the IGA market. The village bought his old cinder-block store for $84,000, probably for use as a park shelter. Turk estimated that it would cost him $220,000 to build a comparable replacement. But on replacement construction the law provides for a ceiling of $50,000 above the fair market value of any commercial building, so Turk is financing a balance of $86,000 himself. "The solar panels didn't cost any more than it would have cost just to put plywood over that part of the roof," he says. Despite recent arctic temperatures, he hasn't needed to turn on his furnaces. "I've cut my heating bills by 100%."

Not everyone admits to being impressed. Ed Herbst, who used to own the Kickapoo Scout, the local weekly newspaper, complains that Government aid is too slow in coming. But then he pulls out a brochure describing, of all things, geodesic domes. There is just the tiniest gleam in his eye as he explains that he has been thinking, just possibly, mind you, of building "one of these things" for a new downtown tavern. Then Herbst recalls the old days. "There were times," he says, "when I had to put the paper out, standing in this much water." He holds his beefy hands about 2 ft. apart. "We built a platform like a raft to put the presses on so they could float."

--By David Jackson

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