WAUKESHA – Spurred by seeing the fabled ghost towns of the West, abandoned when rich gold or silver veins were either exhausted or never found, University of Wisconsin-Waukesha geography professor Randy Rohe about a dozen years ago began to research similarly disappearing towns in Wisconsin. In his well-documented book filled with “before” and “after” photographs, Ghosts of the Forests: Vanished Lumber Towns of Wisconsin, published earlier this year, he examines the history of lumbering in Wisconsin. On Thursday, September 19, he will discuss what he has found, speaking at 7:00 p.m. in Conference Room 101 located in the Commons on campus at 1500 N. University Dr., Waukesha. Copies of the 344-page book, containing more than 200 photographs, will be available for purchase then as well.
Besides rooting through documents at the state historical society, Rohe has explored the countryside for clues and shot all the modern-day photographs himself. Much of what he has collected comes from relatives of deceased residents, names he tracked down through old lumbering journals and archived town newspapers. Along with their stories, these informants provided pictures of the ghost towns in their heydays in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Rohe brings life back to the relics. He reconstructs the everyday in bygone lumber and milling towns, from crime trends to religious observances and from education to recreation. The death of these burgs came for only a few reasons: exhausted timberland, fire, company moves. Left behind are fields now populated only with rodents and occasional building ruins and sometimes a stray shoe, knick-knack or other evidence that real people lived there.
He calls his work Volume 1 and continues to gather new information toward a second volume.
Rohe holds a bachelor’s degree in geography with a minor in anthropology from Carroll College and master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Colorado. He has been teaching at UW-Waukesha since 1983.
His presentation is part of the campus Visions & Expressions series, exposing students to an enriched academic environment through stimulating intellectual inquiry. It is sponsored by the University Convocations Committee and is open to the public at no charge. |
