Histories: Trempealeau Co. Historical Accounts:
"History of Trempealeau County Wisconsin, 1917":
Chapter 9:
County Seat, Courthouse and Jail
-As transcribed from pages 114 - 116
The
county having been created through the influence and clever planning of
Judge Gale, the county seat was placed at his proposed village of
Galesville. In the years that immediately followed, Trempealeau
occasionally expressed its aspirations, and once went so far as to
prepare a petition to the legislature for a vote on the question of
removing the county seat there. The petition was accepted by the
legislature and an Act passed March 5, 1868, authorizing the
election. The voters rejected the proposition. To the
majority of the people of the county the division of honors between the
two villages seemed an equitable one. Galesville was the seat of
learning as the home of Gale College, it was the source of government
by reason of the location of the county seat, and it was the center of
considerable influence as the residence of several prominent men.
Trempealeau possessed the advantage of being on the Mississippi, and as
all of the exports of the county were shipped from there, it naturally
became the commercial metropolis.
But the growth of the county in the decade following the Civil War, the
building of the railroad through the center of the county in 1873, and
the increasing importance of the villages along its line in the
Trempealeau Valley caused a growing discontent with the location of the
courthouse in the southeast corner of the county. Judge Gale was
dead, the prestige of the name no longer upheld Galesville, Trempealeau
had ceased to be the shipping point of the county, the balance of power
had shifted from the southern townships. Whitehall, Arcadia,
Independence and Blair were all ambitious, and the people of the
northern part of the county naturally joined with the people of the
central part against those in the southern part.
In order to establish their grip on the county seat, the people of
Galesville caused to be introduced at the board meeting of November 13,
1875, a motion to spend $500 in repairing the courthouse, repairs which
in fact were needed, as the building was becoming inadequate for the
demands upon it. That motion being defeated, a proposition was made to
erect a new courthouse at a cost of $15,000. This was likewise
defeated.
A year later, at the election of November 7, 1876, the voters of the
county decided in favor of removing the county seat to Arcadia, which
had become the metropolis of the county. The people of Gale,
however, did not propose to let their advantages slip from their grasp
without a fight, and on November 18, 1876, John McKeith of Gale
proposed to the county board that the county offices and meeting place
of the board should remain at Galesville until the next annual meeting,
or until otherwise ordered by the board. The proposition was
defeated, being favored only by the members from Gale, Caledonia and
Ettrick, who hoped to keep the county seat in the southern part of the
county, and by the member from Lincoln, who desired Arcadia to secure
no advantages. John D. Lewis led the fight for Arcadia, and on
the final proposition of selling the property at Galesville he had only
two opponents, the members from Gale and Trempealeau.
November 21, 1876, a committee was appointed to supervise the removal
to Arcadia. January 2, 1877, the board met in the schoolhouse at
that place.
Whitehall now entered the fight in earnest. Galesville, strongly
entrenched in historic tradition, had been defeated, and it was
believed that Arcadia would prove a less formidable foe.
Presenting the argument that Arcadia was on the western edge of the
county and Whitehall in the geographical center, the people of the
latter village had circulated a petition, and securing the necessary
number of signatures, asked the board on January 3, 1877, to call for
an election on the question. Mr. Lewis alleged that many names
had been secured by misrepresentation, and that most of the signers
thought the petition was one requesting that no county tax be laid for
erecting county buildings. He demanded for Arcadia the right to
be represented by an attorney and witnesses before the county
board. But he was denied that privilege and the election was
ordered to be held in the fall. However, in spite of this coming
contest, the board appointed a committee to draw plans for the erection
of a $20,000 building at Arcadia.
At the election held November 6, 1877, the voters decided by about 600
majority to move the county seat to Whitehall. The citizens of
Arcadia alleged fraud and secured an injunction, but in the end were
unsuccessful in their contentions.
January 23, 1878, the board met at Scott's Hall, at the southwest
corner of Main and Scranton streets, in Whitehall, and after
considerable jockeying passed a resolution condemning the people of
Arcadia for their attitude, accused them of stirring up strife, and
engendering animosities which would take years to overcome, and
wrongfully putting on the county the cost of expensive
litigation. In the same resolution S. W. Button was authorized to
employ Judge Thomas Wilson of Winona to defend the board in the
injunction proceedings brought by Arcadia. On the final vote, the
only members opposing the resolutionwere the ones from Arcadia and its
adjoining town of Dodge, and the two southern towns of Caledonia and
Trempealeau.
Blair now appeared as an aspirant for county seat honors, but on
November 5, 1878, the voters again declared in favor of Whitehall.
The people of Arcadia continued to feel that not only was Arcadia the
logical place for the county seat, but that they had in fact been
defrauded out of it. The necessary number of names being secured
to a petition, the question of removing the county seat to Arcadia came
before the voters November 7, 1882, and was defeated by a county of
1,874 to 1,454.
Thus for the third time, the people had declared in favor of
Whitehall. The fight had been long and bitter, the newspapers had
been filled with recriminations, the quarrel had been the chief subject
of conversation for years, the ill feeling engendered was long to
remain, but the people of Arcadia accepted the situation cheerfully and
set about to maintain the position of that village as a metropolis of
the county, even though its geographical position had defeated its
county seat aspirations. The question was now practically dead,
though the people of Independence prepared a petition and endeavored to
secure an election in the fall of 1883 on the proposition of removing
the county seat to Independence. It was found, however, that the
number of votes cast at the previous election was 2,013 of which
two-thirds was 1,342. Of the 1,493 names on the petition, 1,318
were on the poll lists and 162 were not. The status of 16 names
was in doubt. The petition thus fell short of the necessary 1,342
and no similar petition has since been attempted.
November 15, 1882, O. J. Allen of Lincoln, moved before the county
board that the courthouse be erected in Whitehall. The
proposition carried by a vote of 12 to 5, the opposing votes being
those of the members of Arcadia township and village, and their
neighbor Dodge, of Burnside where the people had aspirations for
Independence, and of Preston were the people had aspirations for
Blair. A building committee was appointed consisting of A. H.
Cary, J. D. Olds, M. J. Warner, H. Hoberton and John McKeith. A
large lot was presented by the town of Lincoln, and that town also paid
$5,000 toward the construction of the building. Work was started
in the spring of 1883, and the building was completed late that year at
a cost of about $20,000, being occupied early in January, 1884.
November 11, 1885, money was appropriated for a jail, and work was
commenced the following spring in charge of a building committee
consisting of H. Hoberton, E. H. Warner and Peter Ekern. It was
accepted November 1, 1886, having cost about $8,000.
The courthouse and jail proved adequate for more than thirty
years. In 1910 the need of improvement was apparent, and on
November 16, 1910, after preliminary investigation and due consultation
with the State Board of Control, it was decided to rebuild the jail,
and at the same time to build an addition to the courthouse which would
nearly double its capacity. The first set of bids was rejected,
and on January 10, 1911, the contracts were let. The work on the
courthouse and jail was completed late in the fall of 1911 at a cost of
nearly $30,000, the committee in charge consisting of James N. Hunter,
chairman; E. F. Hensel, secretary; E. F. Clark, C. Q. Gage and F. A.
Hotchkiss.
The courthouse and jail are surrounded by beautiful wooded lawns which
stretch across the schoolhouse property and merge in the public park,
which in turn extends to the village cemetery, this giving the people a
beautiful sweep of public property scarcely to be equaled in western
Wisconsin.