You can drive down the one lane Great River Road from Prescott to La Crosse, Wisconsin and you’ll pass right through the middle of old riverside towns that are still beautiful and alive. This stretch of country has a wide but deep river valley, with the Mississippi flowing beneath forested bluffs on either side.
The dramatic river valley is unusual for the state. You can make the 3 hour drive from Wausau to St Paul and pass by miles of wide open corn fields, with maybe a few round, forested hills in the background. Turn onto the river highway and you’ll first pass through blufftop corn fields, go by a handful of factories, and pass along loaded freight trains, rooting it in gritty reality. But there’s a turn where you round a little hill. The bluffs and the wide sparkling river come into view, and it’s like seeing a new side of a longtime spouse: familiar and exciting at the same time.
The towns here hang on to their history well. Stockholm, Wisconsin, near the northern end of the valley, has become a little gem of tourism and recreation, with museums, restaurants, galleries and shops now occupying the old but maintained buildings in its two-block downtown stretch.
Cross the road and you’re in the town park, overlooking Lake Pepin, a mile wide flowage ringed by green bluffs. You may see sailboats, with white sails billowing in the breeze. The shade in the park comes from oaks maybe six feet across. They must be hundreds of years old, having somehow survived the logging that clearcut nearly the whole state a century or so back.
Across the river there are some bigger towns. One of these is Red Wing, Minnesota. While beautiful and historical, the town itself is no museum. You can see the history in the buildings downtown, its several museums, or even the parks. But it’s also home to thriving companies, manufacturing, a major art center and non profit, tourism and recreation.
The Saint James Hotel, in the very center of downtown, is an old and very beautiful brick building that makes great use of its historical bones. While slightly modernized by a more recent tower addition, it is lushly finished and decorated inside.
Behind the front check-in desk, there’s a grand staircase lobby, with plush leather chairs in front of a fireplace and tall carved bookshelves filled with old books. In its cavelike basement there is an atmospheric cocktail bar with speakeasy vibes.
The historical industries of Red Wing still make an impact today. The hundred year old shoe company is still around and thriving by all accounts, with its offices and flagship store right across the street from the hotel. The pottery company, though no longer in operation, has left a footprint. There is a museum devoted to it, which showcases how little Red Wing Pottery was a nationally influential design house for decades. The old multi story brick building that was once home to the pottery company has been preserved and repurposed. It now beautifully houses offices, shops and restaurants.
The venerable beauty of Red Wing and other old places feels otherworldly to us. It doesn’t seem possible that they could be built in today’s world. They point to a time when craftsmanship was valued over efficiency, and tradition was valued over comfort. And this gives us a hint, that in the not so distant past, things were much different, and people were much different.
And no one told the story of those people better than Laura Ingalls Wilder, the girl whose family lived rough, gathering, hunting and farming their livelihood from this very valley. Laura’s birthplace is a few miles from the lakeshore in Pepin, Wisconsin. In her book, Little House in the Big Woods, she describes her family’s dependence on the bounty of the land. When they grew corn, they used every part of the plant, they didn’t throw out even the stalks, but wove them into hats. She tells of her life in the woods, and also of her family’s visit to the village of Pepin, at that time a bustling market town on the lake.
The historical presence here is a human artifact built in the midst of an unexpected natural beauty. The bluffs here are tall, a couple hundred feet or so, but not so tall that they feel remote or inaccessible. The grassy forested slopes along the lake call out to be explored, enjoyed, inhabited. You can hike along them, as in Maiden Rock, where you can circumnavigate a prairie whose Western edge overlooks the lake from a height. In the fall, you can have a picnic at a blufftop apple orchard and drink sparkling apple cider. It’s as if the apple trees tap into the nectar that gives this place life.
Lake Pepin is a mile or two wide, wide enough for sailing and power boating, but small enough to canoe across, or for the athletically inclined perhaps even swim. In the winter, I imagine that hardy residents of Stockholm might brave the cold to walk or even ice skate to Lake City for a hot cup of coffee.
Within this valley, past and present are wrapped together in a warm and intimate nest of natural beauty. It drips with the goodness of life. So it only makes sense that its residents have, over the years, sought to honor their creator with beautiful religious buildings. Near Lake City, there is a beautiful old Catholic school building once known as Villa Maria Academy. Today it is an event venue, specializing in weddings, but its appearance is still otherworldly. From across the lake, its historic stone facade and massive round towers with conical red-shingled roofs make it look like a storybook castle.
There are 93 Catholic Church buildings in the United States that have earned the title Basilica due to their historical or liturgical significance. St. Stanislaus Kostka in little Winona, Minnesota is one of them. It’s historically a Polish church, built in a Baroque and Byzantine style. It’s essentially a round structure, about 120 feet across, with a massive dome and turret, which reaches up to 170 feet high. Its facade is a bright red brick with white trim. Inside, it is carpeted with red velvet and there is a sea of wooden pews, with space for probably a couple thousand. The interior space is interrupted only by four white columns. It’s only four blocks from the river. From its 40 foot wide front porch, one can hear the honk of river cruise ships and barges, and see the swirling seagulls.
Another 50 miles downriver is the city of La Crosse. La Crosse is much larger than the other cities of the valley and marks a sort of southern terminus. Not far beyond La Crosse, the valley flattens out into a plain.
Like the other towns and cities of the river, its historical bones are solid. On Pearl Street, there is an ice cream and confection shop in a brick building that is 150 years old. From the ice cream shop, you can walk to the river in a couple of minutes. Before your cone is half gone, you’ll be standing at the main channel of the Mississippi River, no longer the leisurely flowage at Pepin, it has condensed to a grand, mighty current a thousand feet across.
Near the downtown, there’s a massive brick building which houses St Rose Convent with a stately Romanesque church called Chapel of Our Lady of the Angels. The convent, though it has been repaired and renovated extensively over the years, has roots going back over 150 years. Like elsewhere along the river, the reverence of those long ago people has been preserved in brick and stone. But unexpectedly, here in La Crosse, there is a modern religious building of equivalent or even greater beauty.
A few miles outside of La Crosse, on a pine-forested hill surrounded by corn fields, the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe sits with its asymmetric blocky tower of dappled cream-colored stone pointing into a blue sky from a clearing in the pines. Its shapes are simple, rectangles and triangles, but the texture and color of the stone face and tile roof remind one of a Tuscan hillside. Inside, the church is long and narrow with rows of dark brown pews. There are columns and arches separating the central space from side aisles. High on the walls there are shiny gold accents, and under the central dome, the Ave Maria is written out in gold letters. It’s a style that is geometrically plain, but rich in detail and texture. Completed in 2008, the shrine will be welcoming visitors as long as there are people living in this enchanted valley.
Sometimes, it seems that time has passed this valley by, and sometimes it seems that it is the only place where anything really happens. I sometimes wonder what it is about this place that is so attractive, appealing and special. Much can be said, but it begins and ends with the river. It’s what made the bluffs so deep, and its natural abundance of fish and river clams has attracted residents throughout the years. The Mississippi is so rich in symbolism for our country, and is still an important conduit for trade, commerce and recreation. I consider any day I spend on or along it worthwhile, and long after I’m gone, it will be treasured by people I will never know. The river, mighty but lovable, carves its path in the earth and through time.