[birds chirping]
- Narrator: The Badger Army Ammunition Plant,
reactivated for the Korean War,
continued to run at high capacity
during the war in Vietnam.
Thousands of workers made the propellant
that powered weapons of various kinds.
For more than two decades after Vietnam,
the staff maintained Badger in a state of readiness,
until the Department of Defense
made a shocking announcement.
- Department of Defense has said to Congress
and to General Services Administration,
"Defense does not need Badger anymore for its purposes."
- Narrator: The closing of Badger set off a debate
about the future uses of the plant
and its seven and a half thousand acres,
over 1,400 buildings,
and its roads and railroads and pipelines.
- Curt Meine: A lot of us
who lived in this area,
especially those of us involved in the conservation community--
and Sauk County is extraordinarily rich
in conservation-minded citizens and organizations--
a lot of us began to think, this is an amazing opportunity.
It may look daunting,
and it was not an attractive place
in a conventional sense,
but we also recognized that it was
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to take a large landscape
and to envision a whole different opportunity
involving conservation.
[somber piano music]
- Narrator: As the Army began the slow process
of dismantling the plant
and cleaning up the polluted site,
the discussions about Badger's future uses--
and its past-- continued.
- Curt Meine: There was a lot of controversy
about what would happen here.
There was a lot of pain.
There were all kinds of conflicts
that were playing out.
We had, of course, the loss
from the Native American perspective of land
170 years ago.
We had the farm families who were removed
from this landscape at the outset of World War II.
We had the army workers, who had devoted their lives
to working here, who were no longer employed here.
But we began to say
maybe we have an opportunity to turn the page
and create a new and more positive future
that could recognize
those historical episodes and chapters,
but also create a new chapter.
So, we brought together
as many different people as we could, and organizations,
and began to create a dialogue in our community.
With no set plan,
we just said, "Let's come together."
And a couple friends of ours commissioned
Victor Bakhtin,
an extraordinarily talented artist,
to do a painting, and we called it
"Sauk Prairie Remembered:
A Vision for the Future."
We took it around, we brought it to schools
and churches and town halls,
and we held discussions about it.
And that painting inspired a lot of people.
It planted in people's imaginations
what this place could be and look like and hold.
[crickets chirping]
- Narrator: Most of the Badger lands
were signed over to three entities:
the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
for its Dairy Forage Research Center,
the Wisconsin DNR,
to create the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area,
and the Ho-Chunk Nation,
which received 1,500 acres of its ancestral land.
A formal planning process,
involving all levels of government,
the Ho-Chunk Nation, and local citizens groups,
provided a roadmap for the reuse of the land.
- Curt Meine: And lo and behold, after a long hard year,
we actually found
that we came together.
We shared a vision,
and it was all but unanimous.
We saw that this landscape
had amazing opportunities for several different uses.
In fact, we identified them.
Opportunities for education and research,
both the natural and cultural history of this site,
large scale ecological restoration
of the Sauk Prairie
and the other ecosystems on this land.
The Ho-Chunk Nation has been very actively
undertaking ecological restoration work,
primarily through burning,
and a little bit of cropping in the interim,
before reintroducing native prairie vegetation.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture
is doing really fascinating research
trying to get some baseline information
about how agriculture
could be undertaken in new and different ways
that would be more sustainable and healthy for the land.
We had opportunities for recreation.
It's a large area.
It's right next to the most visited state park
in the state.
You have the Wisconsin River on its southern border.
So it's a positive story of environmental restoration
that can bring people together again,
behind a positive new chapter
in this land's story.
["Wokixete Naawa" in Ho-Chunk ("Love One Another" song)]
- * Wokixete wire, aireno, aireno *
* Herusga ra Wazagusra ewino, aireno *
* (Love one another, they say, they say, The good people, The Creator said that, they say)
- Narrator: In 2018,
the Sauk Prairie community
celebrated the completion of a new section
[clapping] of the Great Sauk Trail.
Bikers can now wind their way
through the wide-open spaces
of the former ammunition plant.
Future sections will connect the trail
to Devil's Lake State Park to the north.
To the south, the trail runs along the Wisconsin River,
through the villages of Sauk City
and Prairie du Sac.
The trail runs by the Prairie du Sac dam,
which, in the winter,
created an unplanned tourist attraction.
After Wisconsin banned the pesticide DDT,
the endangered bald eagle made a remarkable comeback,
and the churning, open water below the dam,
created a perfect spot for winter feeding.
During the yearly Eagle Watching Days,
visitors can often take in the sight
of a rehabilitated eagle,
and experience its release back into the wild.
[all cheering]
Each Labor Day weekend,
the villages celebrate their agricultural heritage
with the Wisconsin State Cow Chip Throw.
[crowd cheers excitedly]
Other community ties to the farm
include a century-old farm service business
and others not quite that old,
all relying on the bounty of the land
and the hard work of the farmer.
And the former prairie lands provide the setting
for the growth of many other local businesses.
To serve a growing number of residents,
a new hospital on the edge of both villages
provides care for the whole Sauk Prairie region.
Drawing on the beauty
that once inspired Agoston Haraszthy
to create a settlement here,
the two villages
continue to find creative ways to flourish
in their remarkable place on the river.