Hidden History of the Wisconsin Dells Area

By Ross M. Curry

The history of the Wisconsin Dells area is as unique as its glacier-sculpted landscape. It has been a gathering place for tribal councils, a vacation spot for enthralled tourists and a stopping point for the raftsmen who might have had a little too much of the "Devil's Eyewater" brewed by pioneer Robert Allen. Local expert Ross M. Curry has been chronicling the region, from Baraboo to Lyndon, for almost sixty years. Join him for those chapters of the area's story that he himself has witnessed, and then follow him as he hikes back to a time before the Kilbourn Dam, when towns were lit by gaslight, justice might be enforced by duels or "necktie parties" and hardships had to be outlasted by tightknit families with unshakable faith and their own butter churns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Dec 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9781614232643

Ross M. Curry

Ross M. Curry was born on November 13, 1929, in a farmhouse at the height of the Great Depression. He attended rural schools and was an honor grad of Wisconsin Dells High School before attending what is now Madison College. He worked as a printer and later as a writer for the Wisconsin Dells Events for forty years, the longest anyone ever worked for a newspaper in Wisconsin Dells. He has been partially deaf since a childhood illness but learned to communicate by lip reading. He married Sylvia Phillipson on April 6, 1963. They are parents of a son, Ross P. Curry, and a daughter, Laureen Hunter, and have five grandchildren. He was an active church worker for most of his adult life and taught Sunday school for fifty-five years. He presently writes a column for the Wisconsin Dells Events and another for his church newsletter. He is a former member of the Dells Historical Society and the author of nine books on genealogy and local history. He has written over one thousand published articles. Ross's grandfather moved into the area as a baby in 1849, and his father knew all the earliest settlers in the Kilbourn-Dells area. His grandfather's sister married the son of Eben and Roseline Peck, first settlers in Madison and Baraboo, and all of their descendants are related to him.

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