In April of 1965,
after a fire destroyed the facilities of WKBT-TV,
the station reported from a makeshift studio
the news of the day,
a record-high flood of the Mississippi River.
- John Medinger: Inundated a great portion
of the city of La Crosse,
particularly the low lying area
between the north and the south sides,
and a lot of businesses, a lot of old warehouses
had a lot of water standing in them.
I don't think anybody thought about it at the time
but it was kind of a seminal event
in the sense that the city fathers,
the Chamber of Commerce, those types of folks,
decided they wanted to rebuild La Crosse,
and rebuild it into something different.
- Narrator: The move to rebuild
came at a time when bad economic news
was also flooding in,
as many of the industries that defined the city's identity
were closing.
- John Medinger: My father was a tool and die maker
at Allis Chalmers.
They made farm machinery.
They closed in '68 to '69.
We used to have Northern Engraving on the north side.
Auto-Lite Company, they closed.
And several other places.
Rubber Mills had employed a thousand people making boots.
They're gone now.
So we've lost a lot of our big manufacturers.
- Narrator: But one city industry,
the G. Heileman Brewing Company, continued to grow.
Company president Roy Kumm
devised a strategy to compete with the big, national brewers
by acquiring small, local brands.
- David Delano: Roy started by purchasing a small brewery
in the eastern side of Wisconsin called Kingsbury.
Kingsbury, at the time, was a very popular-priced,
meaning cheap, beer
which gave Heileman a different segment of the market.
That was just the start of what was to come because there many,
many more acquisitions over the next couple of decades.
- Narrator: As it acquired small breweries nationwide,
Heilman's continued to brew those local beers,
holding on to each brand's loyal customers.
As its fortunes grew, Heileman
helped to establish a new fall festival in La Crosse
called Oktoberfest.
The event was an immediate success,
and soon became a major attraction for the city.
And as the festival grew, so did the Heileman brewery.
- David Delano: In 1971, Russ Cleary took over the business.
And Russ had much the same inclination
to acquire breweries.
Heileman grew steadily, and actually meteorically.
- Susan T. Hessel: And I think what was so interesting
about that era is that it was almost like
notches in the city's psyche as Heileman moved up from,
I think it was like from 37, to 17, and all the way up to 4th.
- David Delano: Not all of the growth
was with acquisitions, either.
Old Style became a very, very formidable brand.
[dramatic instrumental music]
- Advertisement: Pure brewed in God's country.
- Narrator: Heileman developed the theme of "God's country,"
with ads connecting the beauty of the La Crosse area
and the purity of its water, with the quality of its product.
- David Delano: A lot of Chicago people
looked at this mystical product coming from somewhere
in the Wisconsin woods,
and the Old Style brand really took off.
- Advertisement: If you lived here,
wouldn't you brew the best beer possible,
just so you could stay?
- David Delano: By the 1980s, however, there was a problem.
And that was there just weren't
any more little breweries around to pick up.
The business was over $1 billion in sales at that time,
so it was large, but it had also become a target for acquisition.
- Narrator: Alan Bond, an Australian entrepreneur,
announced that he was buying up Heileman stock,
taking control of the company,
and adding it to his worldwide business empire.
But overextended with debt,
the Bond Corporation soon collapsed,
and brought the G. Heileman Brewing Company down with it.
Eventually, with local backing,
the facility restarted with its original name,
City Brewery,
continuing an industry as old as the city itself.
In 1965, while the flood crested at nearly 18 feet,
WKBT also reported on the demolition of an old landmark,
the County Court House, built in 1903.
And in the years after the flood,
the La Crosse Redevelopment Authority
began to buy up and tear down the old industrial buildings
of the waterfront,
eventually making way for a convention center and motels
that would bring new life to the old downtown.
- Medinger: We rediscovered the Mississippi river
about 40 years ago,
we took the opportunity to demolish, revitalize,
tear down, renew.
And that gave us a tremendous kick start
in revitalizing our downtown area and our waterfront.
A lot of things spun off of that.
- Narrator: But when the old city hall was taken down,
the pendulum of the wrecking ball
began to swing the other way.
Preservationists began organizing
to save the next target of demolition,
the old post office.
- Susan T. Hessel: People woke up and said, "Wow,
"this is the last really major building
in the old civic center."
They wanted to fight for this building.
- Narrator: It was not to be.
Despite strong efforts to save it,
the old Romanesque landmark met with the wrecking ball.
Though replaced with a much more efficient building,
remnants of the old building remain,
marking the beginning of a preservation movement
that would save much of the old downtown business district.
- Susan T. Hessel: Even though that post office was not saved,
there came out of it something very important,
which I think is a respect for preserving history,
for saving buildings.
- Medinger: We have to make La Crosse
into what is unique and what is special.
It makes us a tourist destination.
We have thousands of jobs in the tourist industry in this area
that brings in tens of millions of dollars from outside visitors
who come here.
But it also makes us people who live here proud of La Crosse.
That we are preserving the best of our past,
but we are not living in the past.
And I think that is what I really like about La Crosse
is that we are preserving the past,
but we actually preparing ourselves for the future.
Well, I think when you think about La Crosse today,
you think about higher education,
we have three wonderful institutions here,
the University of Wisconsin- La Crosse, Viterbo University,
and Western Technical College, which bring
about 15,000 students into this area each year.
In a city of 53,000 that obviously has a dramatic impact.
And then healthcare,
Gundersen Lutheran is our number one employer
with 6,000 employees.
St. Francis Hospital is around 3,000 employees.
- Narrator: The Health Science Center,
a joint project of the city's three colleges
and two healthcare centers,
now serves as a state-of-the-art research and teaching facility.
- Medinger: Dramatic changes.
So we've gone from a manufacturing area, to today,
to a high-tech healthcare higher education.
- Narrator: And La Crosse continues to grow in other ways,
as new immigrant groups take their place among the old.
- Medinger: The La Crosse that I grew up in is dead and gone.
That La Crosse of the 1940s, '50's, '60s is gone.
It's history; It doesn't exist anymore.
We are no longer just Germans, and Norwegians, and Lutherans,
and Catholics, anymore.
We're much more than that.
We have become part of the bigger world.
And for that, we ought to rejoice and celebrate.
- Narrator: But for all of its growth,
the city of La Crosse
still draws inspiration from the river.
- Ed Hill: We see ourselves as a river town,
and I don't think that will ever change
because here we are nestled in this beautiful valley.
People feel kind of a home here.
It's historically rooted.
And even if they just moved here three years ago,
they become historically rooted.
I think anybody who spends much time in La Crosse as a resident
has a kind of connection to the river
that they're not even aware of most of the time.
They go out and look over that river.
It's a powerful instinct.
One of the things that's been pointed out many times
is when some of the businesses closed here, the big industries,
almost all of those people,
even if they got offers to move elsewhere to a similar job,
chose to stay.
They could not imagine leaving.