For eight days, Heerman and his crew scoured the river. Logs were removed from cornfields, islands, thickets, creeks and wherever else wind and waves had pushed them. Some were sailing down the river and had to be pursued in skiffs.
Around Burlington: Lumbermen s failed attempt to take over steamboat spurred ongoing retaliation
Bob Hansen
for The Hawk Eye
Grab the welcome mat and burn it. Pull shut the window shutters, turn out the lights and whatever you do, don’t answer the doorbell.
That could have been the householder’s mantra in the mid-19th century when Burlington played springtime host to the boisterous bands of north wood lumbermen determined to shake six months of winter isolation from their unkempt bodies and raise a little hell in the process.
If the truth be known, the loggers who harvested the Wisconsin and Minnesota woodlands and then floated the great masses of logs downriver to lumber towns, such as Burlington, were a good deal more than simply “boisterous.”
Bob Saar
for The Hawk Eye
Des Moines County supervisors ended their Tuesday meeting with department heads by discussing the feasibility of removing the basement-entry restriction that has been in place at the courthouse since last year.
The courthouse front doors were closed last March to entry from Main Street.
Supervisor Jim Cary led off the discussion by saying the county should follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines in re-opening the lobby.
Courthouse maintenance supervisor Rodney Bliesener said people have been inquiring about re-opening the lobby and asked those attending the meeting what they thought about opening the front doors to entry again.
Around Burlington: Who killed Louisa Fritsche? The world will never know
Bob Hansen
for The Hawk Eye
In the catacombs of the Des Moines County Courthouse, where only an idle scribe would venture, is a mother lode of yellowing documents dusted with soot from some long ago forgotten fire.
The pages in the stacks are brittle, and the precise scribbling of long-dead court reporters is fading. Soon, the content of the records will be forever lost.
The gradual disappearance of these records will erase many of the stories of young Burlington. Among the losses will be the story of the Fritsche family that captivated the community in 1893.
Around Burlington: Burlington rail strike created long-lasting community rift
Bob Hansen
for The Hawk Eye
The 1922 “Shopmen’s Strike” is one of those misdeeds of history Burlington would prefer to forget. The walkout of employees at the railroad “shops” was to take place against the backdrop of the nationwide rail strikes of 1922. But in Burlington, this labor dispute took on an especially ugly tint.
The rail history leading up to the dispute gave a hint the interests of labor and management was diverging disastrously and a day of reckoning was to come. In 1922, that day arrived because the nation’s railroads had just been returned to private ownership after being taken over by the federal government during World War I.