Weister Creek
| Weister Creek | |
| stream | |
 Beaver Dam on Weister Creek, Wisconsin 2010
|
|
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| State | Wisconsin |
| Region | Vernon County |
| Source | Vernon County |
| - elevation | 1,200 ft (366 m) |
| - coordinates | 43°41′42″N 90°42′29″W / 43.69500°N 90.70806°W |
| Mouth | Confluence with the Kickapoo River |
| - elevation | 810 ft (247 m) |
| - coordinates | 43°37′15″N 90°37′39″W / 43.62083°N 90.62750°WCoordinates: 43°37′15″N 90°37′39″W / 43.62083°N 90.62750°W |
Weister Creek is a stream, some 25 miles (40 km) long, in Vernon County (formerly Bad Axe County) in southwestern Wisconsin in the United States and is a tributary of the Kickapoo River. It lies in the Driftless Area which is characterized by hills and valleys apparently missed by the last glacial advance during the . Much of the lower half of Weister Creek is surrounded by wetlands and lies in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve.
The area’s history of European settlement dates back to the seventeenth century expedition of Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet who canoed down the Wisconsin River to the popular fur trading post Fort Crawford, now known as Prairie du Chien. W. T. Sterling is credited for being the first white explorer of Vernon County (formerly Bad Axe). Originally from Kentucky, his family and two other men ventured from Madison to explore the Kickapoo River and its tributaries in 1832.
During the 1820s the Ho-Chunk Nation or Winnebago was forced to give up their reservation and were relocated by the federal government because of desire to exploit the lead ores in the area.
The area known as the Kickapoo Valley Reserve would be "Lake LaFarge" but efforts by the Army Corps of Engineers to build a dam on the Kickapoo River above La Farge, Wisconsin for flood control were abandoned after a 20-year struggle with environmentalists. However, the federal government had acquired property for the dam project and reservoir beginning in 1969, and ultimately 140 farms were purchased from mostly unwilling local property owners. In 1996, the federal Water Resources Development Act was passed, deauthorizing the dam and authorizing the transfer of the 8,569 acres (34.68 km2) mostly back to the State of Wisconsin, but specifying that 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) would be transferred to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs to be held in trust for the Ho-Chunk.
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Wikipedia