Governor James T. Lewis, the ninth Governor of Wisconsin (1864-66), led the state through the tumultuous conclusion of the civil war. He was born in New Your State and in 1845 settled in Columbus where he practiced law. In 1854-56 he built this house in the Italianate style of architecture. Lewis began his political career as a Democrat, serving in the Assembly, state Senate, and as lieutenant governor.

   He joined the new Republican party and was elected Secretary of State in 1861 and governor by an overwhelming majority in 1863. Lewis served one term and returned to his large land holdings and legal profession in Columbus.  Erected 1957

   Considered the most important historian of the United States in the twentieth century, Frederick Jackson Turner brought a new understanding to the meaning of the American experience. He was born in Portage; his father was Andrew Jackson Turner, a longtime local newspaper editor and activist. Young Turner left Portage to study at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (B.A. 1884, M.A. 1888) and John Hopkins University in Baltimore (Ph. D 1890). He taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (1889-1910) and at Harvard University (1910-24) and, after a Madison stay, became senior research associate at the Huntington Library in California (1927-32).

   Turner's essay on "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered in Chicago in 1893, reoriented the study of American history toward the nation's westward migration and its consequences. For over a half century Turner's frontier thesis, along with his own and his students' emphasis on the history of sections of the U.S., new research resources, and environmentalism, defined the American character and dominated research and teaching of the American experience.  Erected 1993

   Wisconsin has a unique heritage as the birthplace of circuses. More than a hundred had their beginnings in Wisconsin, with Delevan providing winter - quarters for twenty-six between 1847 and 1894. New York brothers Edmund and Jeremiah Mabie brought their United States Olympic Circus to Delevan in 1847, and the idea for P.T. Barnum's Asiatic Caravan was developed in Delavan by William Cameron Coup in 1871.

   In Baraboo the Ringling Brother's World Greatest Shows began in 1884, followed by the five Gollmar Brothers' Circus in 1891. Each of the communities on the map was the home of at least one circus. Today, thousands of items recalling the exciting and colorful history of the circus are preserved in a vast complex 15 miles from here, at Baraboo's Circus World Museum, opened by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 1959.  Erected 1971

   Early roadside rest areas were rural school grounds and country churchyards with their two little houses in back. In Wisconsin, by 1920, curves were built to eliminate sharp road corners. Local garden clubs, with the American Legion and Auxiliary, began to beautify many of the resulting triangles with flowers and shrubs. Motorists used these places to relax and picnic.

   In 1931 the Wisconsin Legislature authorized highway beautification, and later the familiar waysides - small roadside parks at first and for many years without water or sanitation. In 1940 garden and women's clubs, the Legion, the Wisconsin Friends of Our Native Landscape and others organized the Wisconsin Roadside Council, joined by the County Highway and County Boards Associations, to aid the State Highway Commission in roadside development and increasing and improving waysides.

   Through such initiative Wisconsin gained the experience to become one of the very first states to provide these modern full-facility I-Road rest areas you now enjoy approximately every 50 miles.  Erected 1979

   Merrimac's first permanent settler, Chester Mattson, obtained a territorial charter in 1848 to provide ferry service across the Wisconsin River. The State Legislature of 1851 authorized a road, subsequently to become State Trunk Highway 113, to connect settlements at Madison and Baraboo via Matt's ferry.

   Today, the Merrimac Ferry is the lone survivor of upwards of 500 ferries chartered by territorial and state legislatures before the turn of the century. The fee charged by early ferrymen for taking a team and wagon across the river was well earned, for their muscles provided a good share of the ferry's power until a gasoline engine was added around 1900.

   The ferry changed hands several times before Matt's Ferry Road was added to the state system in 1923 and Columbia and Sauk Counties took over its operation. The name Colsac is a phonetic derivation of the two counties names. The State of Wisconsin assumed responsibility for the maintenance and operation of the ferry in 1933, after which service was provided without charge.  Erected 1973

   On June 14, 1673 Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet started the portage (1.28 miles) from here to the Wisconsin River which led to their discovery of the Upper Mississippi June 17, 1673 at Prairie du Chien. The expedition, in two birch bark canoes, traveled south to the mouth of the Arkansas River and returned to St. Ignace, a trip of nearly 3000 miles. Thus a new era of exploration, settlement and commerce began for the Great Lakes region, the Mississippi Valley and the Far West.

   Stabilization of the fur trade followed and also the organization of numerous Indian tribes under French rule. Marquette, a talented Jesuit missionary, dedicated his life and energy ministering to the Indians. Born June 1, 1637 in Laon, France, he died near Ludington, Michigan May 15, 1675.  Erected 1957

   The mounds of this group are a fairly representative sample of those built by the people of the Effigy Mound Culture between A.D. 700-1000. It has been through excavation of other burial mounds quite similar to these that archaeologists have learned most of what they know about the people who built them. These people lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild vegetable foods. They practiced little if any agriculture.

   There was usually only a single burial in mounds such as these, but in some mounds upwards of a dozen burials have been found. Artifacts such as flint tools and clay pots were seldom included with the burials. Archaeologists have not yet accurately determined the significance of the various animal and geometric shapes in which the mounds were built.  Erected 1971

   John Muir (1838-1914), world-famous naturalist and "father of the national park system," often stopped to rest and admire this view as he walked from his home in Marquette County to the University of Wisconsin. Muir loved the wilderness from which his parents carved a farm and home, first at Fountain Lake, later at Hickory Hill, about twenty miles north from here (south of Montello). When he left Hickory Hill to enroll at the university,

   Muir's love of nature was matched only by his genius for "mechanical contrivances" varying from a device to feed the horses at any designated hour to an "early rising machine" which tipped the occupant out of bed at any pre-set time. After four years in Madison, Muir "left one university for another, the Wisconsin University for the University of the Wilderness."  Erected 1955

Location:   State Highway 33, 0.5 miles East of Portage at Fox River Rest Area

   Major Elbert Dickason founder of Wyocena, was born in Virginia in 1799. He moved to Illinois where he joined their militia during the Black Hawk War. Representing a Milwaukee land investor, he founded Columbus in 1839.

   When his ventures failed in 1843, he moved with his wife Obedience and family to Wyocena. He purchased land for $1.25 per acre, built a cabin, and surveyed, platted and named the future settlement.  Erected 2000

   Major Elbert Dickason's log cabin became a refuge for many land buyers who flocked to this area in the 1840's. In 1846, Dickason began construction of a two-story frame hotel to accommodate the buyers.

   Unfortunately, Dickason died in 1848, before the hotel was sold to Columbia County as the county's first home for the mentally impaired and the poor. The building served in this capacity for over 100 years.  Erected 2000

   This site has traditionally been a popular picnic area for Wyocena residents. As early as 1905, approximately 1,000 people attended an insurance company picnic at this location. In 1948, Gordon Spear, a lifetime Wyocena resident, sold the grounds to Columbia County and requested that the area be named a county park.

   In 1971 his dream was realized when the park was completed, dedicated and named Wyona Park. The Spear-Allen Shelter house honors pioneer families instrumental in the creation of this park.  Erected 2000