My childhood companions all lived on the south end of Prairie du Chien near Fort Crawford Medical Museum. We felt the mysterious lure of history as we walked past its front porch windows, through which the primitive instruments of 18th century medicine could be seen. We heard stories of skeletons and bone saws that waited in the Ft. Crawford rooms and we wondered what horrors and delights lurked behind those windows.
Today, history still invites discovery behind museum windows and porch doors. The Medical Museum is now simply the Ft. Crawford Museum, a fascinating exhibit of medical history, frontier life, and community stories. Inside, you can explore the place that served as a frontier outpost during Prairie du Chien’s military history, and where Dr. William Beaumont pioneered the study of human digestion.
The bridge onto St. Feriole Island spans both the backwaters of the Mississippi and the story of Prairie du Chien. The residential houses that once populated the island were removed for flood control, and what remains constitutes the river town’s early history. Log homes, the Dousman House Hotel, the Fur Trade Museum, the Brisbois House, and the famed Villa Louis – all stand as grand ghosts of Prairie du Chien’s glorious past.
The Villa Louis in particular, open to the public May – October, offers visitors an opportunity to walk through the 1890’s, imagining what it was like to live as a servant or a guest in this opulent Victorian mansion. No need to peek through the windows; daily guided tours take you into the heart of this meticulously restored country home.
I recently visited Brisbois grave, standing atop the bluff overlooking Wisconsin’s second oldest city. Prairie du Chien sprawls like a tapestry from bluff to river. I could see it both through my eyes and a child’s eyes, when history lived at the end of my outstretched arm.
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