The Dells.
Those two words litter the Wisconsin countryside like giant hunks of cheddar cheese. (Plastic hunks, of course, with contours and shadings so real you want to take a bite.)
The billboards start 150 miles out: Ride the Ducks! Take the Plunge!
Wonder Spot! Tommy Bartlett`s Ski, Sky and Stage Show! You may have escaped to Wisconsin, but there is no escaping the roadside sirens of the Dells.
In the Dells` case, however, the signs do not tell all.
They do not say that this area, unlike most of Wisconsin, home of brewers, packers and cheeseheads, is deceptive, even two-faced. It is charming and ghastly, subtle and brazen, lovely and trashy.
Mention the Dells to discriminating adults, particularly those from Chicago who admire real wood and natural fabrics, and you evoke visions of a pink-flamingoed hell, a neon valley of schlock and ham-handed hucksterism that makes Las Vegas look subtle.
Mention the Dells to kids, no matter where they come from, and you evoke pure glee. The buggers open their mouths and squeal so loud that you can see wiggling epiglottises.
Somewhere in between, between the roar of fiber-glass waterslides and the haunting beauty of the sandstone outcroppings, between the mucilage of a Tommy Bartlett bumper sticker and the handmade moccasins of the Winnebagos, lies the essence of Wisconsin`s most maligned, scorned, celebrated and valuable tourist attraction.
Two questions endure: (1) ”When do they know that the dog who jumps to and from Stand Rock, 46 feet above ground, is too old to make the leap?” And (2) ”Is there really a Tommy Bartlett?”
Specifically, the Wisconsin Dells are seven miles of sandstone cliffs and gorges that in prehistoric times made up the bed of a Cambrian sea. When the water receded through the ages, the beds were hardened and shaped by the elements into their present forms. The result is layered, craggy rock walls and formations lining the cocoa-brown Wisconsin River.
That is what geologists say. The Winnebago Indians, who settled the area after the prehistoric Mound Builders and before the white man, have a different story. They say the Wisconsin River was inhabited by a giant serpent who decided one day to go to sea. When he came upon a large body of rock in the area of the dells, he thrashed and struggled and carved all the various forms in the rock.
The sandstone is soft and porous and contains enough moisture to support white pines and verdant ferns that jut from them at all angles. Also called Potsdam Sandstone, it is found only here; in Potsdam, Germany; and Zurich, Switzerland. The Wisconsin River is dark brown because of tannic acid created from miles of tamarack swamps to the north. Put a glass of it up to the light, however, and it is clear as spring water.
The area is divided by a hydroelectric dam into the Upper and Lower Dells. In the 1600s French missionaries, trappers and adventurers came here from Canada. The term ”dells” has many origins, but the most widely accepted is that it is a corruption of the French term les dalles, meaning flat layers of rock. In the 1800s the area drew fur traders, lumbermen, river raftsmen and railroaders. It was the raftsmen and riverboat captains who, under the influence of much homemade whiskey, embellished the Indian lore concerning the rock formations with tales and tags of their own.
The Winnebago Indians, after struggling with white interlopers through the years, have remained a fixture in the county. They call themselves Ho-Chunk-Gara, which means ”people with strong voices.” It is no
coincidence that in addition to their part in the ceremonial shows, one of their biggest concessions in the Dells is the Ho-Chunk Bingo Hall out on U.S. Hwy. 12.
The Dells became nationally known thanks to the Crandall sisters, Phyllis and Lois, a pair of early residents and entertainment visionaries, and H.H.
(for Henry Hamilton) Bennett, a shutterbug. In the late 1800s Bennett developed a photographic process somewhat like 3-D that captured the Dells`
rocky panoramas. His photos gradually circulated throughout the country and drew curious visitors, including Mary Todd Lincoln, who boarded steam-driven paddle-wheel boats to view the sights.
The Crandall sisters first got involved in the attraction of Indian ceremonies. Just after World War I, groups of Winnebagos, the native Indians of the area, began staging dances and demonstrations for tourist boats tied up near Stand Rock. They passed a war bonnet among the audience for donations. A local boat captain, Glen Parsons, who, research confirms, was no relation to Tommy Bartlett, saw the show`s appeal and organized it into a nightly summer attraction called Pow Wow.
In the 1920s Pow Wow became the Stand Rock Indian Ceremonial. The Crandall girls, whose ancestors also do not include Tommy Bartlett, got involved as producers and directors and expanded the show to include different tribes, songs, dances and sound effects. There was the famous War Dance, the Dog Feast Dance and the Sunrise Call of the Zuni. The stars were Chief Silvertongue, who sang like a bird, Chief Evergreen Tree, who did bird imitations, including the famous rendition of a robin finding a worm, and Chief Daybreak, who was emcee.
The show was so good it was invited to the Century of Progress in Chicago in 1933, thereby ensuring yet a whole new wave of potential Dells visitors.
The greatest thing Phyllis and Lois Crandall did for the Wisconsin Dells, however, was to own them. The farm family secured possession of the seven-mile stretch of riverfront property at the turn of the century. The sisters ultimately willed it to the University of Wisconsin Foundation. That wise act insured the outcroppings, the legendary cliffs and chasms, from ever being sullied by local entrepreneurs.
That was no fickle decision, for as much as the locals extol the ancient beauty of the Dells, they cannot be trusted. What would Tommy Bartlett have jumping from Stand Rock? How many loops could a waterslide make around Hawk`s Beak? Might chenille bedspreads be vended on Pulpit Rock?
A taste of downtown Wisconsin Dells, a few blocks of Broadway Street, known as the Downtown (even though there is no Uptown) Strip: Bill Nehring`s Dungeon of Horrors-Pulse-quickening for the Strong of Heart! Laser Zone Combat Area. Gifts, Gags, and Souvenir Shop. Tommy Bartlett`s Gyrotron. Penny Arcade Shooting Gallery and Games. Old Time Photos. Engraved Wood Plaques. Photo Covers-Your Face on a Magazine. Nig`s Bar-Have a Swig With Nig. Monk`s Bar. Wisconsin Dairyland Fudge. On Stage!-Recording Booths and Studio.
(Steps to Stardom: 1. Choose your favorite song. 2. Practice in private booth. 3. Sing-a-long-as easy as singing with the radio. 4. Record. 5. Take home a professional recording on cassette starring you!) Funnel cakes, corn dogs, citrus bombs, gyros, Vienna beef, soft pretzels, lemonade. The Sea Shell Gifts. The Haunted Mansion of Baldazar. Old River Mini-Golf. Galaxy of Games. Wax World of the Stars-with George Burns, Clint Eastwood, Michael Jackson, Elvis and Einstein.
Actually, there are two strips: Downtown Dells and U.S. 12 through the town of Lake Delton. You walk the former and drive the latter. U.S. 12 has all the big water parks and go-cart tracks and a lion`s portion of the Dells` 70 restaurants and 4,000-plus motel rooms.
What you also see is a remarkable lack of big chains and corporations. Dells businesses are owned mostly by resident families, known for years as locals, many of them Polish and Ukrainian. The Matteis own Familyland water park, the Watermans own Noah`s Ark. For better or worse, but without a computer at some headquarters in Ohio, they make all the decisions.
They hire scores of high school and college kids from all over the state to work the attractions. The boat-tour companies outfit their guides and clerks in white shirts with gold-striped epaulets. They smile a lot, even though 70 percent of the 1.5 million visitors, those flabby, mini-van families in shorts and sleeveless Cubs T-shirts who come each summer, drive up from the Chicago area. By the end of the season, the locals, who get a little cranky because of the crowds, refer to these customers as FIBs. The middle initial stands for Illinois; the other two cannot be printed here.
Joan Wilcox grew up in Wisconsin Dells when it was still called Kilbourn, for railroad magnate Byron Kilbourn. Her father was an interim mayor of the village for a few months. In 1931 the town`s name was changed to Wisconsin Dells.
Few people know the Dells better than Joan and her husband Duane, and few people have more patience with it.
Says Wilcox: ”The boat tours and the Indian ceremonial were a fact of my childhood. The boat docks were always surrounded by Indian gift shops selling moccasins and beads. There were small curio shops, some of them with junk and some with fine gifts. The Trading Post goes back to the 1920s.
If you give Duane a chance, he will belt into his favorite Indian songs and chants from the many Stand Rock Ceremonial shows he has seen.
What Wilcox recalls most fondly about the town of her youth was a huge dance pavilion with a live orchestra that attracted tourists and locals. Near that was outdoor bingo.
She also remembers when, as a girl, she and her friends rode their bikes down the three miles of U.S. 12 from town to Lake Delton and passed nothing but open fields where today stands Howie`s $1.95 All-You-Can-Eat Breakfast, Mexicali Rose, The Original Wisconsin Dells Ducks, Family Land water park, Noah`s Ark water park, Tommy Bartlett`s Ski, Sky and Stage Show and Tommy Bartlett`s Robot World and Exploratory, Biblical Gardens, eight dozen billboards announcing that all of the above are just 1,000 feet ahead, and an endless phalanx of restaurants, motels, amusement parks and gift shops that make up that present-day strip.
”The first attraction not connected with the boat rides was Ft. Dells,
(now the Crossroads) at the intersection of (Highways) 12 and 33. That was in the `50s. Then the binge began. It was really a matter of someone starting something one summer-like the superslides with flour sacks-and the next summer there would be three more of the same,” Joan says.
When they married, the Wilcoxes moved to a small town in Wisconsin where Duane taught school, yet they retained ownership of a cottage in the area. When Duane retired they returned to live year `round. People who meet them for the first time always ask why.
”We live on the quiet side of it all. If we want it, we can take it. If we don`t, we can retreat to the woods,” she says.
Still, they wish the place would tone down a little.
If they`d just get rid of the signs,” Duane says.
”At one time the natural beauty was the most important thing,” Joan says. ”Now they`re trying to get back to that. But it may be too late. Especially for the kids.”
On the other hand, their grandson comes up regularly from Milwaukee. Where do they take him?
”Noah`s Ark,” Duane says.
Forget the brochures, the billboards, the promos, the coupons and the commercials. The inside rating of the Dells comes from John and Andrew Miller. Two savvy Chicago kids whose parents have had a summer cottage near the Dells for 18 years, John, 15, and Andrew, 18, have seen it all and done it dozens of times. They can tell you when to go, what to avoid, and even supply ingenious, and occasionally dubious, ways to get more for your money. Give them $50 and 50 hours in the Dells, and this is what they would do.
