In the center of the State of Wisconsin lies a hill that is used today as a place of recreation, the hill is home to a state park and a ski hill, Rib Mountain. Most people who go to this beautiful area look at what is present and not about what has been in the past. Memory of a place is important to carry on, and Rib Mountain has many memories that have begun to be forgotten.
To get to the Rib Mountain hill that people have come to know many things have had to been done. To get the land for the state park and the idea for the state park land to be accumulated the land had to pass through many hands and businesses that has helped families, given hope for prosperity and had destroyed a family and their business.
Rib Mountain State Park is located in the Township of Rib Mountain. Rib Mountain, Marathon County, Wisconsin was part of the Town of Weston (now known as the Village of Weston) prior to 1905. In the year 1905 the town was named after the Weston town Chairman George Erickson (the Town of Erickson), later to be renamed the Town of Feith, and finally in 1930 the name was changed to the Town of Rib Mountain. To get to being a town people had to have moved there first.
The First people to settle on Rib Mountain was the Knapp family in the late 1800’s. The family acquired their land by the Homestead Act. In 1891 the family sold their land to a quarrying company. This family had success on the land and made a profit from the work that they did.
In the early 1900’s, as they were settling Rib Mountain, people believed that there was gold in the mountain. A prospector, his name unknown, tells the story of a man whom had traveled to Alaska where he had seen a mountain that was rich with gold. This prospector had said that the hill was similar make up, size and look to Rib Mountain. Using the similarities of Rib Mountain to the hill in Alaska that was filled with gold, the prospector convinced local investors that Rib Mountain was also rich with gold to fund his personal mining expedition. Unfortunately the hope he had for the gold was lost when the mining expedition turned up no gold. The land on the hill was also being used not only for prospecting at the time but for a source for natural resources such as the forest for logging.
Many small logging businesses had used Rib Mountains land. The premier logging business was owned by Jacob Gensmann. It was in 1906 was when the Gensmann logging business closed quite tragically. Jacob Gensmann and his oldest son were running one of the last logging operations on Rib Mountain. Rib Mountain has a rocky terrain which made the transportation of the logs difficult because horse teams could not get up and down the hill. The company had built wooden chutes down the side of the mountain where the logs would be passed through and come flying out the end flying twenty to thirty feet in the air. In 1906 Jacob Gensmann’s son was crushed by the logs which made the family shut down the company.
Rib Mountain State Park was make a state park officially in 1922 when the heirs of Jacob Gensmann donated forty acres to the State of Wisconsin. Later the Kiwanis Club of Wausau bought an additional 120 acres and turned it over to the state as well. While the park was being managed and the roads, tobogganing, ski and shelter areas were being built during the Great Depression another scheme for the hill was beginning. The development of the Rib Mountain Ski Hill (later bought by Charles Skinner and re-named Granite Peak Ski Area) had started in 1936, which would later become the hill that is known now.
The memory from each of these stories have been forgotten. Looking at the history of the place is important because the memory of what the place had gone through to become what it is should be respected. For example, what would have happened to the land if the Knapp family had decided to not sell their land, or if Jacob Gensmann’s son was not killed? It is important to realize what has been done, to have what it is now. In the case of Rib Mountain lives had been built and lives have been taken. Memory of other places may be the same or different. Memory shapes how we see a place and how histories are made.
Wisconsin Rediscovered 