Saturday Travel Feature
School on the FoxKaukauna, Wisconsin is 100 miles north of Milwaukee and is east of Lake Winnebago. The town of 12,983 people sits on the banks of the mighty Fox River. Kaukauna High School is on an island in the middle of this river that divides the town into North Side and South Side. Kaukauna High School has
1,350 students and is the only public high school in Kaukauna. The original school was built in the late 1850's. The school in the photo is that school but it is now a middle school.
There are five bridges that cross the river within the city. There is also a hydroelectric company with its dam. And because of the dam there are locks for the movement of boats along the river. In the 1940's all the Kaukauna children knew the chant describing the boat whistles, "One for danger, two for dock, three for passing, and four for locks."
"The city includes diverse industrial and manufacturing businesses, including the Oscar Thilmany Paper Mill, constructed in 1883. The name dropped off the mill when it was purchased by HammerMill in 1969, which was in turn bought by International Paper in 1986. In 2005, theNew York-based equity firm Kohlberg & Company bought the mill, changed the name back to Thilmany, and created a company of the same name. It is this paper mill that is the cause of a less than desirable odor that can be detected at times throughout the Fox Valley. [4] Kaukauna club cheese, once made in the city, is now manufactured by the Bel/Kaukauna corporation in the neighboring village of Little Chute."
Link.
Kaukauna High School is where Suzanne Wilson's parents, Hazel Juergenmeyer and Orville Frank, met.
Photo: Taken in 2006 by SW.
