Day Light Store

This delivery wagon for the Day Light Store, a local grocer, is decorated for a parade. The store was located at various times at 135 Main (proprietor Fred Peterson) in 1910 and 198 Main Street (proprietor H.E,. Bullard) in 1917 when the ad below appeared in the MHS yearbook. TELMO Brand, advertised on the wagon, was a family of food brands carried in stores, much like Kraft Foods today.   

 

 

Top photograph courtesy of the Menasha Public Library

Lock View

This photograph was captioned "View Southwest, Menasha Lock."  From the 1995 Historic American Engineering Record, as documented in the Library of Congress. 

On the Lower Fox, in the course of almost 40 miles, the river drops approximately 170 feet—almost the height of Niagara Falls.  Harnessing this waterway with all the locks made the river navigable in an era when roads were largely dirt, or plank, at best.

The Menasha lock is an example of a pound lock which is a type of lock that is used almost exclusively nowadays on canals and rivers. A pound lock has a chamber (the pound, also known as a reach or a level) with gates at both ends that control the level of water in the pound.

photo courtesy: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS [or HAER or HALS], Reproduction number HAER WIS,70-MENA,3--5

Wisconsin Central

In May of 1900, the Wisconsin Central Railway put together a booklet extolling the virtues of some of the stops on its northeastern Wisconsin route.  Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Neenah, and Menasha all received the travelogue treatment, providing local photographs and flowery essays praising everything from the local industry to the fish and game in the area.  Many of the photographs featured in the booklet have been seen a thousand times before in this blog, but shown above are just a few of the iconic illustrations paying honor to a most celebrated mode of travel for its time, the railroad. 

Gibson Chevrolet

December 3, 1965 Appleton Post-Crescent

The Gibson Company was a foundation of the downtown business district for many years on Main Street, right next door to the old fire station. Alenor J. Gibson, Jr., son of the firm's founder, was the maternal grandfather of car dealer John Bergstrom. Bergstrom got his start in business by selling cars for his grandfather after graduating from the Marquette University business school. 

Gilbert Idyll

 

The recently departed smokestack makes another appearance in a souvenir postcard of our fair town.  Few ducks in evidence, but quite the reflection.

St. Patrick's School

This 1910 postcard shows the largely undeveloped Washington Street heading towards the horizon.  This school building, the parish's second, lasted until June of 1940.  The school we all remember was dedicated in August of 1941.

Roselawn Dairy

Roselawn Dairy, located northeast of Menasha on Manitowoc Road, like many others in the community was eventually a victim of the large milk producers who could undercut the price points of smaller concerns and "bring the savings home" to consumers.  But at what cost?  The same mentality that Wal-Mart and big box grocers later used to drive smaller competitors out of business was at work here. 

The protective caps shown above are products of a by-gone era, when milk came in bottles that were reused again and again.  The four digit phone number dates these caps to the late 1940s. 

June 5, 1961 Appleton Post-Crescent

 

You can see from the letter above, that Roselawn was one of the victims of this 1954 "milk war."  By 1967, Gear and Marten's would be gone too.