Vanishing Clues to an Ancient Wisconsin Natural Disaster

uriosity is the natural impulse that often leads to new discoveries. It is most certainly true in this
case as well. In the spring of 2010, as hazel brush and brambles were being cleared for an
extension of a vegetable garden, the warm day and the land clearing effort necessitated a pause
atop an large earthen mound that had just been exposed. Family tradition maintained that these lumps are
Indian burial mounds. That is simply local mythmaking in the process; it is but quaint lore to excite
youthful wonder. Everyone who is a native of the Northwoods knows that these dirt piles represent the
untimely demise of some grand tree. As the fallen tree decomposes, the earth captured by its vertical
tangled roots forms the mound; the hollow represents the original location of roots and soil. One can
even determine the direction of the trees fall by the relationship between the stump mound
1
and the
hole. Firsthand knowledge of the creation of such excavations stemmed from the great Riverview
tornado, or as meteorologists named it, the tri-county tornado of June 7
th
2007.
2
In the vicinity of the
garden project, over 50 maple and bass trees were tipped over in a swath 100 yards wide and a quarter
mile long by an offshoot of this storm. The culprit was straight-line winds, such as was likely responsible
for the stump mound next to my garden. As these factors were pondered atop the pile, several issues
became apparent. The first concerned the shape of the hole associated with the mound; the maple and
bass trees formed rounded holes, three to five feet in diameter, something dictated by their root structure.
This hole was long and oval shaped, indicating a shallow and spreading root system more like that of
pines. The second issue was the very size of the mound itself; it was easily three times bigger than the
fresh damage caused by the Riverview tornado, indicating a far larger tree. From the elevated vantage
point atop the mound, a dozen more large grassy piles were visible all around. More striking was the fact
that all these structures shared the same orientation. That was the moment when the vestigial survivors of
some long forgotten storm made themselves apparent. Being a life-long resident of the area, I know these
mounds (with the same orientation) can be found for miles to the north, south and west.
3
These then are
the remains of a blow-down, as they are called by the older folks.
4
The direction indicated a force that
came out of the north-west, and tipped all the trees to the south-east. Straight-line winds can be as
devastating as tornadoes or hurricanes, but the damage tends to be narrowly defined. An event able to
topple mature trees over such a wide area strongly indicates something rather significant. Additional
evidence concerning the details of this event was lacking, and what follows in this paper has been taken
directly from notes I began to keep following the day of realization atop the stump-mound.




1
This is what I have decided to name them for the sake of this paper.
2
This tornado was an acknowledged EF-3, and noticeably, either broke trees off some feet off the ground, twisted
them beyond recognition, or pulled them up completely.
3
The phenomenon appeared at first to end at the Peshtigo River, three or so miles to the east of my garden.
4
The late woodsman Cater Parker for instance, spoke of one that hunters found years ago somewhere near
Goodman, Wisconsin, that had occurred in the wild without anyone knowing it. He also speculated that the natural
prairie that yet existed in the 1930s, near Grandfather Lake in Marinette county, was the result of a blow-down that
burned.
C
Report on findings, May 31, 2010
I tilled my garden for the second time (that spring
5
). I set the depth between 6-8 inches and as I
made my passes from north to south this time (before I was east to west) I hit several pieces of old dirty
wood, included one piece kicked up east of the garden, ten in all. Seven of the pieces bear evidence of
fire, three appear unburned. Two of these (three) are because they are knots; one is a chip, a broken
fragment that displays end grain. All are pine, type of species unknown. The pieces are impregnated
with dirt into the smallest of holes. Some are hollow, the resin of the knot and the charcoal the only
reason for preservation. Some pieces are found by my tiller in a horizontal position, and show the marks
of the tines. Some of the knots I pulled up with my hand from a vertical position. The charcoal is
invariably on the top. One piece that I kicked up ten feet east was closer to the surface than the others, a
bit of moss on the corner was observed. Now these finds cannot be from the conspicuous stump-mound
south of my garden for the tree it represents would have fallen away from my garden. However I recall a
prominent stump mound 30 yards to the north-west of my garden that was plowed out when I leveled my
yard. Pattern is as follows.

Although wood and charcoal may (someday) be found between the stump-mound and garden,
further finds (to the south-east) might actually allow one to determine the height, thus the maturity of the
trees, and by using the facts thus established, calculate the wind-speed necessary to topple such trees. I
intend to section the stump-mound south of my garden to confirm or refute my suspicions



5
The site of the garden, begun in 2009, had never been touched, and everything around remains virgin ground.


Report on excavation of stump-mound Oct 15
th
2011
Before we started to dig, we took measurements for accuracy. The stump mound is actually 19
feet long and 8 feet wide measured from the center of the hole to the level ground on the down-wind side.
From the bottom of the hole to the highest part, the mound is 3 feet high. It looks like this:

I decided to dig directly through the structure diagonally. The facts I wish to demonstrate are:
did the fire occur before or after the tree tipped over? What, if any, remains of root systems might be
found? What was the size and species of the fallen tree? Digging proceeded smoothly, with no stones
encountered. Soil in this area is a loam.
6
I paused halfway through to make a sketch of the details that
were emerging. The first noticeable thing was the unbroken layer of topsoil, undisturbed, approximately
7 inches thick, covering both the hole and the mound. It is light-brown, and indicates a significant
passage of timesince the stump-mound was formed. Underneath this was a thick layer of orange loam,
10-12 inches thick. This faded to a yellowish tan as it extended down to the old level of brown top-soil.
Another clue was the downward trend of the original topsoil. All the soil layers were exceptionally clear,
no stones, no wood and few organic deposits from small roots (but really not many roots al all). I dug
through the old topsoil layer and continued to the south-east. Soon I came to a light grey layer, followed
by an orange, brown, then very thin black layer. I found the first bit of very decayed wood just inside the
brown layer, followed by a few bits of charcoal. I named this the U shaped feature. The sketch is as
follows:







6
United States Department of Agriculture, Soil Survey of Marinette County, Wisconsin, sheet number 48, PaC
stands for Padus fine sandy loam. See soil description for PaC on page 71.
Findings thus far
It is clear from these excavations that the fire responsible for burning the debris, occurred after
the event in question. The burned debris in the stump-mound is contained in a soil, but soil that was
deposited as the vertical exposed roots decayed. There was no charcoal found within the U shaped
feature itself, as would be if the original sod smothered burning ground debris as the tree fell. The actual
remains of roots suggest that most if not all the roots on the downwind side remained in situ, being bent
or broken off, while the upwind roots were pulled out violently carrying with a large quantity of earth.
The spreading nature of the root evidence indicates a shallow horizontal system, consistent with the great
pines.
The widespread, consistent pattern of stump-mounds is indicative of a onetime disastrous event.
As these mounds are often bisected by railroad grades of the logging period, and erased by settlers fields,
we can safely conclude that they predate the 1870-80s. Also, the hoary age of the massive white pines
7

cut in this region would seem to post date this event (i.e. everything had grown back by modern times).
What sort of event was responsible for such destruction? Several scenarios can be proposed while others
can be excluded. A tornado, or several over long periods of time can be safely counted out. Tornadoes
leave paths a few miles wide at most, not dozens of miles wide. They also come from different directions,
not just from the north-west. A great wind-storm, blowing for days or weeks with unprecedented fury,
could perhaps create a domino effect; the fall of one tree exposes and weakens its neighbor, and so on.
An epic ice storm could also have weighed down the trees, making them top-heavy and vulnerable to
wind. The fact that they were tipped over violently remains the strongest indicator.
Update 9/5/13
Since this project was started, the vast extent of the disaster has slowly been expanded. While trout
fishing outside of Wausaukee, WI, in 2012, another debris field was found and charred samples dug up.
More wood has been recovered from near Fence and Goodman, WI, in 2013. Most remarkably, similar
mounds (again trending north-west to south-east) and ancient pine knots were located near Mellen, WI.
8

The presence of charcoal on almost all these abundant samples would make verifying the age and
distribution of this disaster a rather simple matter.
9
As the evidence for this event disappears with
logging, home construction, and road building, a chapter of Wisconsins natural history vanishes as well.
Sabin Rosenbaum 3/2/14

7
The number of tree rings on the largest white pines run well into the hundreds. See the MacArthur pine cross-
section at the Forest County courthouse, Crandon, WI.
8
There is a curious but noticeable variation; mounds located furthest south trend slightly to the south-south-east,
while the northernmost mounds trend somewhat to the east-south-east.
9
Carbon dating the debris from the disaster would determine fragments of the same approximate age.