[instrumental music]
- Narrator: The city of Stevens Point
lies in the middle of two ecological regions.
To the north,
a towering pine forest.
To the south,
a hardwood forest mixed with prairie.
In this area of overlap called the Tension Zone,
live an especially wide variety of plants and animals
which have drawn people to the area for thousands of years.
[Native American music]
An early map shows a network
of well-worn Native American trails
running through the Tension Zone,
and the Stevens Point area
became an early crossroads of activity.
- David Grignon: The Menominee people
were in the Stevens Point area.
Historically, was part of our ancestral territory,
and we had a historic village site
at Stevens Point.
We called it "Pasipahkihnen."
What that means is "the land that jets out into the waters."
We made use of Stevens Point, too.
Just an area that was rich in resources.
It was here that our people harvested wild rice
along the Wisconsin River.
We made maple sugar in the maple groves,
and fished, and hunted,
and were just a good area for us.
The Wisconsin River was useful to not only the Menominees,
but other tribes, too.
Using the river as a historic highway.
Using it for transportation,
for fishing, wild rice, trapping.
- Narrator: Trails also connected Native Americans
to resources throughout the region.
The trails through Stevens Point formed the groundwork
for many of today's roads and highways.
- Ray Reser: Trail systems were kind of the equivalent
to a water system.
You know, if you couldn't travel by water
or if you needed to portage somewhere
or get to a specific resource,
you used the trail system.
They might be a modern highway today,
but they could go back thousands of years.
People have been traversing that track for a very long time.
- Narrator: As Europeans began exploring the area,
word spread of immense stands of white pine
that would soon be cut along the Wisconsin River.
- Tim Siebert: It's relatively light,
so easy to transport.
Cities needed volumes of the stuff to build.
So it was just the perfect timing for the Great Northwoods.
- Ray Reser: In 1836,
the Treaty of the Cedars happened.
The Menominee negotiated with the federal government
and then Governor Dodge of Wisconsin.
- Grignon: Chief Oshkosh was the head negotiator for our tribe.
Although he didn't want to give up land,
he thought he had to because he didn't want
an army of soldiers coming on our villages
to bring harm to us,
so he and other chiefs agreed to the Treaty of the Cedars.
- Narrator: It would become known as
The Lumberman's Treaty because it included
a six-mile-wide strip of pine along the Wisconsin River.
In the middle on a point of land,
with rapids just downstream to provide water power
was the future site of Stevens Point.
- Tim Siebert: It became the perfect place to store stuff
'cause you were just around the rapids,
and the river from here north
for several miles was very calm,
and you could use boats
much more easily transported the stuff.
[rushing currents]
- Narrator: By the time the government
hired Joshua Hathaway to survey the land for settlement,
many of the water power sites in the area
were already occupied.
*
- Gene Kemmeter: He recorded the names given by early settlers
of locations.
The locals had told him
that this point jetting out into the river
was known as "Stevens Point"
because he owned the cabin that was there.
George Stevens was a lumberman from Almond, New York.
He heard about Northern Wisconsin,
so he made an expeditionary trip up
in 1838
to see where these large lumber domains were.
- Narrator: Stevens used "the point" to store materials
for a mill he was building at Big Bull Falls,
the future site of Wausau.
Despite his brief stay in the area,
Stevens connection to the point stuck.
- Tim Siebert: Stevens Point is the gateway to the pineries,
the Great Northern Pinewoods.
They begin a little further north.
- Gene Kemmeter: Towards the 1850s, 1860s,
Stevens Point area became a good place to locate sawmills.
The railroad hadn't come here yet,
and the river was the means to transport all those logs.
- Tim Siebert: They would cut the logs into rough cut lumber
and then organize them into these giant rafts
that then could be floated down river
and get it on down to oh, say, St. Louis,
where it would be planed and made into fine lumber.
And Point became important because you had
to stop here and hire what became known as a river pilot,
people around here who knew the river.
They were probably
the most highly paid men in the Northwoods
because their life expectancy was fairly short,
and that's why the town began to grow,
is because these loggers would stop here
and have to wait until the river pilot was available.
- Narrator: Men poured into Stevens Point looking for jobs
in the lumber mills and on the river.
As it grew,
the lumber town was able to incorporate as a city
and officially took the name "Stevens Point" in 1858.
The new city already featured six hotels,
ten saloons,
and three school houses.
With a growing population,
the city began to expand east of the river,
and as people bought up land,
the layout of the city took shape,
including a key feature.
- Tim Siebert: Mathias Mitchell,
who we really don't know anything about, [laughs]
came into the area and purchased
a lot of this surveyed land and platted out
a lot of what is now downtown Stevens Point.
At some point,
he then donates a fairly significant
chunk of land to the city as a square,
or what, in Europe, would have been the village green.
- Narrator: Mathias Mitchell's generous donation
would live on as the public square
would become the region's commercial center
and a focal point of the city's history
for generations to come.
[band fanfare]