Lakeshore historical site 'significant effort'
City leaders don't anticipate an archaeological site found under Lakeshore Municipal Golf Course to delay Oshkosh Corp. headquarters construction.
Lakeshore historical site 'significant effort' City leaders don't anticipate an archaeological site found under Lakeshore Municipal Golf Course to delay Oshkosh Corp. headquarters construction. Check out this story on thenorthwestern.com: http://oshko.sh/2nOT3UB
Devi Shastri, Oshkosh Northwestern Published 6:52 p.m. CT Feb. 6, 2018
Golfers ride in a cart Sept. 15, 2017, at Lakeshore Municipal Golf Course in Oshkosh.(Photo: Joe Sienkiewicz/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)Buy Photo
OSHKOSH – City leaders say an archaeological site found under the Lakeshore Municipal Golf Course won't delay the construction of Oshkosh Corp's new headquarters.
But it will cost the city an estimated $180,000 to $190,000 to excavate when all is said and done.
The project is "a fairly significant effort," said James Rabe, the city's public works director. It is common practice for the city to review project sites for archaeological significance, he said.
"After getting burned on a couple projects, we decided that we needed to take a proactive approach to doing that research, the same way we do with other environmental (requirements)," he said.
MORE: Check out a historical map of the area now occupied by Lakeshore Municipal Golf Course
The review of the site started last fall. In November, archaeologists from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee walked through the golf course, digging holes at regular intervals to search for artifacts. They found stone chips discarded from tool-making, knives and projectile points and remnants of pottery.
The Milwaukee team sent a report on the findings to Leslie Eisenberg, an archaeologist at the Wisconsin Historic Preservation Office, last month. Eisenberg will review and approve the initial findings. Her report is due to the city by Sunday.
Rabe expects the site will need to be excavated.
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The area is partially in the land Oshkosh Corp.'s is purchasing from the city to build its global headquarters. The timeline of the excavation will depend on weather conditions. If the ground thaws in time, the project should be done by the second or third week of March, prior to when construction is slated to start for Oshkosh Corp.'s headquarters, Rabe said.
An Oshkosh Corp. spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.
The city hired the UW-Milwaukee Cultural Resource Management Program, which is part of the school's Department of Anthropology. The team's initial screening of the golf course revealed a possible campsite or village from what archaeologists call the late-Woodland period, from 900 to 1200 A.D.
The discovery wasn't very surprising, said Jennifer Haas, the principal investigator on the site and UW-Milwaukee archaeologist.
Reports of the existence of artifacts under the golf course appear as early as the 1920s, Hass said, and is the site is listed as a historical site in the Wisconsin Historical Society's Historic Preservation Database. Haas' team began its work reviewing past literature before testing the area for any artifacts.
"Our state has one of the highest concentrations of effigy mounds. These are mounds that are in the shape of different animals. They've got a lot of parks where the mounds are still intact. Unfortunately, a lot of the mounds were plowed down in the late 1800s, early 1900s with agriculture and development," Haas said."But the Lake Buttes de Morts region did have a number of effigy mounds around the lake … so this is a village site that could have been occupied by the same people who were making the mounds."
Jeffrey Behm, an archaeologist at UW-Oshkosh, anticipates a large, significant site lies under the golf course, as there are several native tribes that lived in the area over the years
A prized location near the outlet of Lake Buttes de Morts, the area may used by people for as far back as the archaeological record goes. The glaciers that covered the area receded about 15,000 years ago, Behm said. He said dig could shine light on the prehistoric people's villages from the area, known as the Oneota, as well as later villages from the 1700s, when the French lead expeditions into the area around Lake Winnebago against the Meskawaki tribe.
"Most of us are convinced that the Oneota in eastern Wisconsin were ancestral to the Ho-Chunk," Behm said. "While we have a large number of Oneota sites in the Lake Winnebago Pool region, we have few that have any evidence of the size and layout of the villages. Depending on how much disturbance the golf course has undergone over the years, if there was an Oneota village present, there may be significant evidence of the houses, storage pits and other features below the modern surface."
A sign welcomes visitors to Lakeshore Municipal Golf Course in Oshkosh. (Photo: Joe Sienkiewicz/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)
Last year, the street reconstruction of Bay Shore Drive revealed a burial site that required the city to coordinate the return of the remains found there to the deceased's tribe for reburial.
There is no indication that the golf course location contains a burial site. City utility crews and equipment will help to offset some of the costs of the project by stripping the top soil prior to the research team's excavation.
"It's not a burial site. That's not what's been identified. It's been identified as a village and the things that have been found are discarded artifacts," Rabe said.
If human remains were found, it would not derail development plans, he said.
"It just means that there are some extra paperwork and processes that need to be obtained through the historical society."
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The Wisconsin Historical Society will determine where the artifacts will go after they are excavated, Rabe said, but he hopes the Oshkosh Public Museum will get some of the finds.
For researchers, digging into a site that has been tracked and preserved is a rare look into regional history that is often lost under modern human expansion and development.
"Because there was this development, a lot of those sites were lost," Haas said. "One of the significant things for me is that you actually have an undeveloped area that by being a golf course, it's preserved. I think that's pretty neat."
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