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FOND DU LAC - Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation recently recognized Fond du Lac County businesses in the 30th Wisconsin Main Street Awards for revitalization, COVID-19 response and exemplary service.
Downtown Ripon took home two awards in the virtual ceremony held April 21: Best Volunteer Engagement and Best Historic Restoration.
Best Volunteer Engagement went to Rotary Square Beautification Project, for which volunteers raised funds and helped lay pavers, assemble pergola shades and install string lights in the 100 block of Watson Street, according to the Ripon Rotary Club Facebook page.
Mapes Hotel, at 300 Watson St. in Ripon, earned the city Best Historic Restoration for last year s renovation. The hotel was originally built in 1853 by Timothy Mapes, the son of Ripon s co-founder David Mapes, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.
True West Magazine
Jim Hoy’s highly personal biography of the Kansas Flint Hills, two new biographies of Butch Cassidy, Bill Neal’s autobiography and Deborah Swenson’s debut Western novel.
From my earliest years, I remember my parents sharing with me their love of the American West and their app-reciation and knowledge of the West’s writers, artists, educators and filmmakers. I discovered quickly that I could travel great distances from North Hollywood, California, across the West through the pages of Western writers whose personal experiences and imaginations allowed me to saddle up right along with them and realize “firsthand” the majesty of the Rocky Mountains, the magnificent mystery of the Grand Canyon and the endless, waving, undulating sea of grass of the Great Plains. I know that if I had been given Jim Hoy’s