Unseen Madison

May you see with new eyes in 2010! Next week look for the debut of our photo of the week contest, which will highlight Madison’s unnoticed places. Also next week, we’ll be mounting a subpolar ice expedition (i.e. about 23.5° below the arctic circle), the exact nature of which we can’t reveal in case it goes badly wrong. Check back for photos, audio, and video, possibly of our last moments.

In other news, our end-of-decade quiz has a winner: Robbie Webber, a former Madison alder now serving on the Bike Walk Madison steering committee. Robbie attributes her skillz to a lifelong interest in natural history. She wins a copy of Bob Birmingham’s new book about Madison-area effigy mounds, Spirits of Earth.

QUIZ ANSWERS
Q. In 1855, the Yahara chain of lakes got a new set of names: Kegonsa, Waubesa, Monona, and Mendota replaced First, Second, Third, and Fourth lakes. Where did the names come from?
A. Madison officials named them after consulting faulty vocabulary lists to find attractive Indian names.

Q. Which tree species dominated the Four Lakes area in 1834?
A. Oaks (white, black, and bur).

Q. How many trees older than 1776 still stand in Madison?
A. About 250. In 2001, Bruce Allison re-surveyed Walter Scott’s original 1976 survey. Though many  trees on the updated list are gone or missing, Madison still has many old specimens.

Q. How did the maple forest east of Lake Mendota (which gave Maple Bluff its name) survive in a savanna landscape that Native people burned regularly?
A. Most prairie fires swept into the Four Lakes area from the west. Lake Mendota and the Yahara River stopped the advance of fires, allowing unresistant trees like maples to grow.

Q. What landscape feature on the east side of the isthmus caused Madison’s factory area to develop there?
A. You could write a book to answer this question, and thankfully someone has. Businesses and railroad lines built up around a mill on the Yahara River, but a large part of the east side lay under the Great Central Marsh. See the tidy but empty grid of tree-lined streets bisected by East Washington Avenue? That 1867 panorama didn’t match reality. The marsh covered the area between East Washington and Williamson. Used for a dump, it polluted residential wells, burned in the dry season, and often stank. Once the marsh was filled, factories used the newly available space.

The year’s final quiz is open-book and open-Internet. If you’re not sure, give your best guess—who can pass up a chance at this prize? The winner gets either two lively hours in the field with Gordon and Jeff (hot chocolate provided), or Bob Birmingham’s Spirits of Earth, a book about Madison’s effigy mounds due out in December. Terrence the Unseen Madison cat breaks ties. Send answers via e-mail (jeff@unseenmadison.com or gordon@unseenmadison.com) or comment.

1. In 1855, the Yahara chain of lakes got a new set of names: Kegonsa, Waubesa, Monona, and Mendota replaced First, Second, Third, and Fourth lakes (numbered in the order they’d been surveyed). Where did the new names come from?

a. what the Ho-Chunk called the lakes

b. what the Sauk and Fox called the lakes

c. what the Ojibwe called the lakes

d. what Madison officials called them after consulting faulty vocabulary lists to find attractive Indian names

2. Which tree species dominated the Four Lakes area as noted in the 1834 public land survey?

3. How many trees older than the 1776 Declaration of Independence still stand in Madison?

a. only one (PDF)

b. about 50

c. about 150

d. about 250

4. What landscape feature on the east side of the isthmus caused Madison’s factory area to develop there?

5. How did the maple forest east of Lake Mendota (which gave Maple Bluff its name) survive in a savanna landscape that Native people burned regularly, since maple isn’t fire-resistant?

Unseen Madison is impressed: our October quiz winner knew all 7 locations for these Madison-area effigy mounds. Another person had 6 and two had 5. Pheasant Branch Conservancy and Spring Harbor were the most unfamiliar locations. You’ll see from the photo that Pheasant Branch is worth a special visit. Spring Harbor, just off University Ave., may be on your way. The great thing about our local effigy mounds is that most are easy to find. We encourage you to take one small detour a week to see mounds! Click the thumbnails for larger images and more information.

We’ll have a November quiz soon. Once again the stakes will be high! As always the winner receives two hours in the field with Gordon and Jeff, or something else we haven’t thought of yet (October’s alternative prize was Indian Mounds of Wisconsin by Bob Birmingham and Leslie Eisenberg).

To the winner of Unseen Madison’s September quiz: a two-hour tour of an “unseen” place in the Madison area. We (Gordon and Jeff) will be your friendly and sometimes knowledgeable guides. On to the quiz!

Look at the banner photo (taken in 1902) at the top of the page.

1. what large feature is in the foreground?

2. what prominent elevation is on the middle horizon?

3. name the building silhouetted against the sky at the far left

4. name one building silhouetted near the far right

Check your answers here. Let us know if you were correct by using Contact in the sidebar. If there’s more than one winner we’ll either hold a random drawing, or invite all winners if it’s not too much hassle.