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Potting Plants, 1911 ca.

Group of women from the District Agricultural School, and gardener E.E. Harris on the far right. View the original source document: WHI 79695

Onalaska is located on the shore of the Black River just north of La Crosse in La Crosse County. Nestled in the river valley below the bluffs, the city was founded by Thomas G. Rowe in 1851, who found the area more appealing for development than the sandy landscape of La Crosse. The city was named in tribute to a line in the poem "The Pleasures of Hope" by Scottish poet Thomas Campbell.

Lumber soon made Onalaska a center of sawmills and booming industry. Lumber also brought many immigrants from New England, Germany and Norway. When lumbering peaked in 1892, Onalaska began to explore other means of commercialization. In 1901, a pickling and canning factory was founded to process crops from local farmers; it also employed many town residents.

Prominent Onalaska residents include three major league baseball players, Chuck Hockenbury and brothers Everett and Earl Johnson, and the first woman from Wisconsin to attend West Point, Kathryn Paul.

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• Onalaska, Wisconsin

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Source: WHS Library-Archives Staff, 2009