By GEORGE ROGERS
of the Gazette
An Illinois couple has given the people of Wisconsin a Christmas present - 161 choice acres on the Little Wolf River.
The land is in the town of Harrison in northwest Waupaca County, a short distance east of the Portage County line. It's so good that the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board has designated it a state natural area.
The donors are Jerry and Jill Martin, Gurnee, Ill. Elward Engle of Wautoma, who worked with them, estimated that the property is worth from $1,500 to $1,700 per acre. At that rate it's a gift of a quarter million dollars or so, but it would probably bring even more, said Engle, if it were sold off in parcels.
Engle is a DNR land agent who has retired but still assists the agency on special projects. He helped with the Martin gift because he had been working with the couple for some time. Engle has dealt with other land donors, too, including Malcolm Rosholt and his late wife Margaret, who some years ago made another large land gift to the DNR on the Little Wolf, upstream from the Martin property.
The Little Wolf River is an excellent brook trout stream with fast water and many boulders, and Engle said it meanders through the Martin land for 6,000 feet, with an average width of 22 feet. He called the stream "next to fabulous" and said the property is "a little wilderness area. ... We seldom see land so totally clean."
The property is heavily forested and "the wild flowers are fantastic," Engle said. Wildlife includes deer, fox, coyote, raccoons, beaver and "the occasional black bear."
Fishing and hunting will be allowed, but you won't be able to drive your sports utility vehicle up to the stream bank. There is no road access and you'll have to walk about a half-mile, said Engle. The property is totally undeveloped and will stay that way. No roads will run through it and there'll be no motorized traffic. "It's what the landowners wanted," Engle said.
He called it "an opportunity for education and a monument to our land ethic," and he said it shows the great importance of wild land at a time when so much is being subdivided and developed. The Rosholts, he noted, felt the same way about their land.
As a state natural area, the Martin land becomes part of a system devoted to scientific research, teaching and preservation of natural areas and genetic diversity.
And who are the Martins?
Jerry Martin is a retired microbiologist who holds 56 patents, many of them related to antibiotics. His wife was a high school English teacher for 32 years.
Jerry said they'd owned the Waupaca County property since 1972 or 1973, buying it from a potato grower who had advertised it for sale in the Chicago Tribune. From the beginning, the Martins had the idea of saving it from development. "I've seen too much change for the worse," he said.
Martin is a trout fisherman and an expert on old fishing lures, but he said he hadn't done much fishing on the Little Wolf and he and his wife never spent much time there. They own land up in Bayfield County and he's done most of his fishing there. But they developed an appreciation for the Waupaca County land and its old trees, including "hemlocks you can't reach around." The land also has other big trees, including white cedars, oaks and basswood.
Stumps show there has been some logging in the past, but basically the property is as it was 100 years ago, Martin believes. It has springs that contribute cold water, a necessity for trout, to the Little Wolf. The fact that fishermen will have to walk a half-mile to get to the stream should be no impediment, he said. "I'm 70 years old and I walk seven to 10 miles a day, most days," he declared.
Martin had praise for Engle and another DNR employee, natural areas specialist Mark Martin of Madison, with whom the couple worked on the land donation. "The DNR is lucky to have them," he said.