Brief Hiatus

I need to suspend blog posts for the remainder of this week for personal reasons.  I hope to resume next week.  Thanks for your support.  

1850 Status Report

October 16, 1850, The Weekly Wisconsin

A few short months later, the area received this status report via the newspapers about the plank road's successful initiation and a glowing report about the hopes for a bigger and more vibrant Menasha. Investors and speculators were inclined to respond to this kind of report and ventured north undoubtedly to check it out and invest in the town.

Plank Road

July 30, 1850, Democratic State Register (Watertown, WI)

This is one of the first mentions of what we know today as Plank Road.  With the unreliability of overland roads in that era, fashioning a road made of wooden planks seemed, for a time, to be a smart move.  The plank road boom, like many other early technologies, promised to transform the way people lived and worked and led to permissive changes in legislation seeking to spur development, speculative investment by private individuals, etc. Ultimately, the technology failed to live up to its promise, and millions of dollars in investments evaporated almost overnight.  Still, the road and its location evolved over the years and remains a vital transportation artery to points east.

Bridge

July 5, 2000, Twin City News-Record

I find I never need an excuse to feature the Tayco Street Bridge in a found photograph.  Plus we get some newsy items from various decades.  I particularly enjoyed the Racine Street Bridge walker out in the middle of the day in 1975 with his "special" plant!  

Free Tool

July 28, 1970, Neenah-Menasha Daily Northwestern

From the same Prospector Days that gave you yesterday's diapers in the hardware store ad, comes this strange barbecue tool, given as a gift by the Bank of Menasha upon opening a new savings or checking account.  (Remember those days when a gift was usually guaranteed for doing such a thing?)  Toasters, candles, piggy banks all were token gifts for just doing business you were likely to do anyway.  Anyway, this so-called whatchamacallit was THE offering for the summer cook-outs in 1970.  Sadly, since we banked at First National, we had to do without this tool, yet somehow, we survived.   

Spankies

July 28, 1970, Neenah-Menasha Daily Northwestern

Oh, the incongruity here!  We here at the blog, love a good Prospector Days ad as much as the next fellow but this one is too good to pass up. Kudos to Cy for stocking a new product, so much so that even a tutorial had to be included on how to use it.  But disposable diapers?!  At a hardware store?!  I won't even comment on the sale priced 50 foot hose, but to leave the "ample rear parking" in is just too good of a double entendre!  Perhaps I've been working too long from home now during the pandemic, but my mind does go certain ways some times.  Please forgive me.

Wholesome Fun

July 13, 1949, Menasha Record

Older readers of the blog will recall the soda fountain at the Memorial Building, ready to quench the thirst or sweet tooth of any number of avid teenagers. This could almost be an ad for the ubiquitous soft drink; high marks for featuring the trademark bottle at the fountain.