1958 Antigo Journal editorial offers a 45-year prospective Dec. 31, 2008 (Editor’s note: This editorial was published 50 years ago today, written by Earle Holman, who holds a record as a member of the staff at the Antigo Daily Journal at 71 years.
He had just capped 45 years with the newspaper and recorded changes he had seen as Antigo advanced from what he termed a “primitive” community to what it had become in 1958.
Holman, a thoughtful and quiet professional journalist and writer had seen Antigo and Langlade move from dirt roads that were not open in the winter to a situation that is very similar to what it is today.
We hope on this New Year’s Eve, you enjoy his perspective on our community.)
By EARLE S. HOLMAN
Since with this month the writer completed 45 years of service with the Antigo Daily Journal, perhaps he may be indulged some reminiscence on the evolution of Antigo and Langlade County.
The year 1913 was the last of those now hard to imagine ones when our own country lived in a state of virtual isolation from involvement in world affairs. In the year following World War I in which, within a short period, the United States became involved. Antigo still bore the marks of municipal youth in its lack of paved streets, a predominance of frame business buildings, widely spaced houses in the residential areas, and street trees, still so short that they suggested the plantings of a prairie town.
The boom period of white pine lumbering was over and the height of hemlock and hardwood logging was not to be reached until sometime in the “20s.’’ It was then that Antigo had its largest number of sawmills.
Antigo's importance as a railroad division point had not quite attained the maximum point in facilities or employment, but the railroad payroll was outstanding. While the number of farmers and farms in the county may have been greater than it is now, agriculture was still relatively primitive compared to its present development. A big proportion of the farmers devoted their winters to logging, or employment in that industry. There were few, good "grade" herds and purebred ones were rare. The lack of development in potato growing was indicated by the small size of the few potato warehouses.
But it is much more fruitful to recount the evidence of progress during the past four and more decades. It was during these that a forest fire protection system was established and ended the repeated fires that covered hundreds of acres with rampikes. Along with it came the new plantations, public and private, that erased all fire blight and made lakeshores saleable. Forest industries were given a new lease on life and promise of perpetuation.
Before World War I Antigo had no direct highways to Merrill or to Marinette, but afterward, with no little promotion from the Antigo Journal, it was linked to them and other cities by a cross-state highway, No. 64. The paving of highway 45 across Langlade County before the counties on either side had paved their sections was the first step toward paving of the entire road across Wisconsin. Today Antigo's importance as a retail center has been brought about largely because of its being center of a network of paved state and county roads.
Dairying was revolutionized as two huge flexible dairy processing plants in Antigo replaced, as milk markets, the numerous small cheese factories and creameries that operated before their erection. Milk production on the farms increased phenomenally.
With mechanization and overhead irrigation potato growing became a business of larger and larger units and heavy capitalization.
In all agricultural advancement, education through agricultural extension, the 4-H clubs, and Future Farmers, played a valuable part. Farmers received much business education in the operation of their cooperatives, another important development of recent decades.
In the city, progress during the past 45 years can be measured by buildings erected. Among these are the post office, the senior and junior high schools and vocational school, the new gymnasium auditorium, and the county teachers college. St. Hyacinth's and St. John's congregations and the Christian Scientists built new churches. St. Mary's congregation and Peace Lutheran Church erected parochial schools. The Assembly of God, Church of God, and Nazarene congregations built houses of worship.
Erection of a building for the Weinbrenner Company brought to Antigo one of its best employing industries, and many lesser ones were started and continue to thrive. The substitution of diesel for steam power struck a hard blow at railway employment in Antigo, as it did in other cities, but the transportation industry continues to provide employment for hundreds of men.
In the county, fur farming became an important business, the recreational industry expanded, and new industries utilizing forest products were founded.
Educational opportunities far rural and small town youth advanced with school consolidations and the provision of buildings suitable to broader curricula.
When the Langlade County Memorial Hospital replaced the two small units operating in old residences, Antigo was on its way, to become a hospital center for its large trade area, and its expansion in recent years has provided the community with an institution in which it takes great pride.
Behind the visible and tangible evidences of progress in Antigo and its environs lies invisible, and often unnoted, thought, devotion, sacrifice and effort on the part of great numbers of men and women.
No brief review can encompass all physical evidences of the community’s advancement, and least of all the intangible factors behind it. But in these lie the ideas and the ideals and the "drive" that overcame obstacles and achieved goals.
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