Histories: Trempealeau Co. Historical Accounts:
"History of Trempealeau County Wisconsin, 1917":
Chapter 8:
Dodge
-As transcribed from pages 87 - 88
Dodge was settled in the middle fifties from Trempealeau, Trempealeau
Prairie and the Tamarack Valley. The portion first settled was that
lying tributary to Tamarack Valley and that lying in the Trempealeau
River flats and small cooleys adjacent to West Prairie. In 1855 Martin
Whistler crossed Whistler Pass and settled in the Pine Creek Valley,
and within a year Ichabod Wood had settled in section 14. Other early
English and American settlers in the vicinity of Whistler Pass were
John L. Sanderson, Almon A. Johnson, Joseph Utter and Charles Keith.
The first Polish settler in Dodge was Michael Chisin, of Winona, who,
in the spring of 1862, settled on the abandoned claim of John Banner.
It was probably about 1862 when the Polish people began to settle in
Pine Creek. They were induced to locate here by John Schmangle, a man
who spoke English, German and Polish. The first six families were those
of Paul Libera, Paul Leishman, Paul Rudnick, Joseph Zabrinsky, Anton
Zabrinsky and Felix Kamarowski. These Polish families were living in
the valley when Mathias Brom, a native of Bohemia, settled there in
1863.
In 1863 there were no improved roads into Pine Creek. The market points
were Trempealeau Village and Fountain City all the year around, and
Winona when the river was frozen. With no improved road over the ridge
communication with Arcadia was most difficult.
A mill was built on Pine Creek in the sixties. It was washed out by a
flood in 1872 and was not rebuilt.
The first German settler in the Trempealeau Valley in Dodge township
was George F. Staflin, who settled in section 11, east of the present
village, on March 10, 1857. About the same time came Casper Walwand,
the first settler in the immediate vicinity of the present village.
Above Dodge one of the first settlers was John Latsch, afterward a
prominent wholesale grocer of Winona. He came here in 1856 and settled
near a creek at the mouth of the valley that now bears his name. In
1865 Frank Pellowski settled in the same valley, and in the next five
years there arrived so many settlers from Hungary that the valley came
to be called Hungary Valley. The name of Latsch Valley is being
gradually resumed, especially for that part of the valley near its
mouth.