08/01/2026
🎉99th Anniversary of the Horicon Marsh Restoration Act!
🦆 99 years ago - almost a century!
On August 1, 1927, Wisconsin Governor Fred R. Zimmerman signed what we call the Horicon Marsh Restoration Act — Chapter 475 — into law, beginning the process of undoing decades of damage to the marsh.
The law is remarkably direct about what it was correcting. It authorized the state to build a dam "to restore the public waters of Rock River on Horicon Marsh to the natural levels existing prior to the private drainage of the same" — a pointed reference to the very schemes I am covering in the upcoming presentation, "The Horicon Hustle."
$25,000 a year for ten years. A wildlife refuge, a game preserve, land acquisition by purchase or condemnation if necessary. It was the beginning of turning a "swamp of lies" back into the marsh we know today.
Almost a century later, Horicon Marsh is a Wetland of International Importance, a Globally and State Important Bird Area, and part of the Ice Age Scientific Reserve - home to hundreds of thousands of migrating birds each year. Not bad for a law that started with just $25,000 and a promise to set things right.
🎟️ Want the full story of what led to this moment? Join Me August 19 at 7:00 PM for "The Horicon Hustle: How a Marshland Dream Became a Swamp of Lies" at the Horicon Marsh Education and Visitor Center. Free and open to the public.
Friends of Horicon Marsh Education and Visitor Center Horicon Marsh Bird Club Horicon Marsh Boat Tours, Horicon, WI @wisconsinhistoricalsociety Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
https://oneshotathistory.com/upcoming-events-and-programs/
More of the story:
The Seven-Year Fight to Save Horicon Marsh
By the early 1920s, Horicon Marsh was a ruin — drained, farmed unsuccessfully, and now burning. Peat fires smoldered across the exposed, dried-out ground for years.
Louis "Curly" Radke, a Horicon native, wasn't willing to let it stay that way. In 1921, he and other conservation-minded locals formed a chapter of the newly founded Izaak Walton League and began a campaign to restore the marsh.
It took seven years. Radke spent his nights and weekends crisscrossing the state, making the case to women's clubs, men's groups, anyone who'd listen. The League circulated petitions that gathered over 100,000 signatures, mailed out 110,000 booklets, sponsored radio broadcasts, and won the backing of 256 Wisconsin newspapers. It wasn't just a lobbying campaign — it became a genuine legal fight, with hearings at the county level, the state legislature, and even the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The persistence paid off. On August 1, 1927, Governor Fred R. Zimmerman signed the bill into law.
Radke didn't stop there. He kept fighting legal battles over the marsh until 1943, and once the water returned, he organized "Duck Liberation Day," releasing over 1,000 ducks to help draw the wild population back — an event that drew 5,000 people of its own.
Today, Horicon Marsh's visitor center mascot — a woolly mammoth named "Curly" — carries his name. Louis 'Curly' Radke, is in the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame!
