We can’t mention Olbrich gardens without talking about Michael Olbrich. From a threadbare childhood on an Illinois farm, Olbrich became a respected lawyer, UW regent, and key member of the Madison Park and Pleasure Drive Association, which created Madison’s great early parks. (Until 1931 city officials regarded parks as luxuries it couldn’t afford. The MPPDA was run—and largely funded—by familiarly named people: John Olin, Edward Owen, William Vilas, Daniel Tenney, Thomas Brittingham, Frank Hoyt, Ernest Warner.)

In the 1920s Michael Olbrich pushed to develop a UW arboretum. He also bought up and donated land for an eastside park on Lake Monona. Olbrich Park was named for him after he committed suicide in 1929, at 48. Many obituaries speculated that  he was driven to it by the stress of a lawsuit, financial pressure, and illness.

With a busy summer ahead, we’re turning to new projects and breaking from weekly photo challenges. Look for more audio and video in 2011!

Last week’s photo challenge was about the elegant stone entrance to Spring Trail pond, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1926. A decade later the “duck pond” became part of the UW arboretum. In winter, water kept open by spring flow attracts hundreds of mallards and a kingfisher or two. Charles Brown wrote that “This fine spring was known to the Winnebago Indians who camped in early days at this place, as ‘Nibin-nagoo,’ or the trail spring, being on or near an old Indian trail.”

In the 1920s Wright also built a wall across Nakoma Rd. for the Dicksons, new owners of Old Spring Tavern. As Mrs. Dickson remembered, ”Frank Lloyd Wright & his stone mason built the stone wall around the place, Frank Lloyd as boss, I can still see him with his old brown leather britches, giving his ideas & council…”

Old Abe’s life is well-documented, starting with her sex: “She though a female bird is named after our president,” wrote Sgt. Ambrose Armitage in his journal. She was captured on northern Wisconsin’s Flambeau River by Ahgamahwegezhig (Chief Sky), a Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe. Ahgamahwegezhig traded the bird to Daniel McCann, who sold the eagle to an Eau Claire militia. Called up for Civil War service, the Eau Claire “Eagles” joined the 8th Wisconsin regiment at Camp Randall.

Old Abe was present at 37 battles in the western theater, including Vicksburg. She was so charismatic that Confederate Gen. Sterling Price supposedly said “I would rather get that eagle than capture a whole brigade or a dozen battle flags.” After the war, Old Abe returned to Madison and lived in the capitol, drawing countless visitors. She attended events around the country and even inspired souvenirs.

In 1881 Old Abe died from smoke inhalation during a fire. Her taxidermied body was then displayed in the capitol rotunda for two more decades, until the capitol burned down in 1904. She now stands at the top of Camp Randall arch, dedicated in 1912.

We’ll have more to say about Civil War hero Old Abe, answer to photo challenge #13, later in the week.

Horace Tenney wrote that “game was profusely abundant” in the Four Lakes area. He “shot prairie chickens on the Capitol Square and the hunting of quail there was common.”

Note: the background music, “Late Summer Air,” was used in the wonderful 6-part National Parks documentary by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, in which hometown historian Bill Cronon figures prominently. DVDs of the series are at the Madison Public Library. Hear more of Horace Tenney in our Dead Lake Ridge podcast.

The answer to last week’s challenge is the newly renovated reading room at the state historical society. This Friday and Saturday is an open house to show off the restored 110-year-old library.

Last week’s challenge asked about Unseen Madison hero Charles E. Brown (Charlie, as he was affectionately known). Name a Madison effigy mound and Brown likely had a hand in saving it from development. From 1908 to 1944 he recorded and preserved mounds and archaeological sites throughout the state as museum director of the state historical society. For 40 years he was secretary of the Wisconsin Archeological Society, which he founded in 1903.

Charlie Brown also studied Ho-Chunk cultural traditions. Because Ho-Chunks (among other modern tribes) are probable descendants of the mound builders,  Brown helps us understand Wisconsin’s effigy mound landscape. Ho-Chunks in Madison were frequent visitors to Brown’s home, and Brown heard tribal stories by visiting Ho-Chunk friends camped on Lake Wingra (some families camped there seasonally until the 1920s). Learn more about Charles Brown in our Dead Lake Ridge podcast.

Bob Birmingham, an authority on the effigy mounds of Wisconsin and Madison, says “a biography of [Mr. X] is a book waiting to be written.” Some Madisonians want to name a city park after him. Who is buried here? Answers are due by next Monday (how to play photo challenge).

The woodcock is last week’s answer. Our non-photo challenge: go see the male’s peenting, twittering, chipping aerial display. The peents and chips are vocal, but not the twittering—that’s produced by the male’s first three primary feathers. In Madison, witness the sky dance (as Aldo Leopold called it) at dawn or dusk on the edge of Curtis prairie, near the UW arboretum‘s visitor parking lot.

Stroll through the UW arboretum‘s Curtis prairie on an early spring evening right before darkness falls, and there’s a good chance you’ll hear the male of this bird species making these distinctive sounds as he performs his spectacular mate-attracting acrobatics. What is the name of this bird? Answers are due by next Monday (how to play the challenge).

Wheeler council ring is the answer to last week’s challenge. Jens Jensen designed it to memorialize Kenneth Jensen Wheeler, his grandson, who died in 1935 just before his graduation from the UW. For Jensen, the council ring had deep meaning, symbolizing equality and democracy and having Danish and American Indian roots. Read Jensen’s statement on the plaque of another council ring near the arboretum visitor center.

Madison has more Jens Jensen connections, including Glenwood Children’s Park and a council ring on the UW campus. Not only is Jensen’s legacy of harmonious landscaping still alive, a PBS documentary is in progress.

The sound of sandhill cranes calling from skyward as they return to their summer nesting grounds is one of my favorite signs of spring. I usually hear sandhills well before I glimpse them high in flight, and sometimes I never see them at all. Once perilously close to extinction in the lower 48, the sandhill crane has made an impressive comeback and is now relatively common. Cranes use wetlands for nesting and agricultural land for foraging (Baraboo’s International Crane Foundation is a good place to learn more).

And there’s something about their call that stirs the imagination: haunting and ancient at the same time, it’s a southern Wisconsin version of the Northwoods call of the loon. Both species have been around for a very long time, with the sandhill representing one of the oldest surviving bird species, unchanged for at least several million years. It’s as if that ancient lineage can still be heard in their voice.

Aldo Leopold wrote powerfully of cranes in A Sand County Almanac essay called Marshland Elegy:

“When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia…”

Listen below to audio from the same location. Singing cardinals don’t give away the answer, but the sound of gently flowing water is suggestive!

Our previous photo challenge asked for the location of this effigy mound group (mounds in gray, including the block-long bird, no longer exist). The two remaining mounds overlook Lake Monona in Hudson Park, near Harry Whitehorse’s now-bronze Effigy Tree sculpture.

It’s hard to imagine now that spring is in the air, but just a couple short weeks ago, Lake Mendota—and the other Madison lakes—felt like frozen arctic tundra. We can attest to this firsthand, as we took a lovely hike on the ice around Picnic Point and Frautschi Point. We were struck by the sense of vastness and solitude we encountered right in the middle of the city, and wondered how many Madisonians have had the chance to experience this wide and transitory landscape.

Sharon Barbour, winter trekker extraordinaire and friend of Unseen Madison, joined us as we stumbled upon a few of Mendota’s hidden treasures. Here Sharon talks—of her own free will, we swear—about the hike and our sterling qualities.

In effigy mound news, hear former state archaeologist Bob Birmingham talk about his new book on Madison mounds at 2 p.m. on March 21 at the Dean House, home of the Blooming Grove historical society,

The last photo challenge asked how Machinery Row got its name. Located in a rich farm region, Madison became a distribution center for farm equipment. So “Machinery” refers to farm implements, and “Row” to two blocks of farm businesses on Williamson Street, also called Implement Row. See photos of Implement Row in 1918 and 1936. Across the street stood the railroad depot.

Last week’s photo challenge asked for the name of the UW arboretum‘s massive (and sadly, dead) white oak at the western edge of Curtis Prairie. In 1963, the Jackson Oak (PDF) was named to honor Joe Jackson, also known as Col. Jackson (he’d been a lieutenant colonel in World War I). It would be hard to overestimate Jackson’s impact on the arboretum. In the early decades Jackson was everywhere: negotiating for land, desperately raising money to meet deadlines, promoting the arboretum to citizens and regents. What else can we name after him?

Now to last week’s challenge. Sid Boyum’s Blue Dragon Urn is on Atwood Ave., next to the Capital City trail (here, to be more precise). Boyum’s public sculptures can be seen around the Schenk-Atwood neighborhood.