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Around The River Bend, A Flood Of History

VPM | By Jacki Lyden

Published October 28, 2012 at 7:18 PM EDT

Updated December 7, 2023

Liam O'Leary

The Bark River was carved in Wisconsin's Ice Age, about 13,000 years ago, when glaciers covered much of the state.

Liam O'Leary

The Bark winds through southeastern Wisconsin's "Kettle Moraine" — small hills called drumlins and deep glacial lakes known as kettles. It's part of the Mississippi watershed.

Liam O'Leary

This former mill is the last private mill on the Bark and was in operation until a few years ago. It was built in the 1850s by one of the founders of Delafield, Wis., Nelson Hawks, to grind corn and grain. The mill pond and an earthen dam are behind it.

Liam O'Leary

Margaret Zerwekh, who has lived in the mill house for half a century, listens to Milton Bates read from his book, Bark River Chronicles. Zerwekh's home is a treasure trove of Delafield history.

Liam O'Leary

Zerwekh, 93, is also a local historian. Due to her efforts, Civil War soldier Lt. Alonzo Cushing finally received his Medal of Honor in 2009. Cushing was born on the banks of the Bark in Delafield. In 1863, at the age of 22, he was killed as he held out against Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.

Liam O'Leary

Maintaining the mill, pond and dam has been a joy, and a struggle. On the mill pond outside of Zerwekh's home, fallen leaves rest on a soft crust of algae pond scum.

Liam O'Leary

The Bark has some muddy shorelines, but it also has "shaking ground," soil that looked solid but is actually afloat. This is called "terre tremblant," or shaking ground. It hindered U.S. troops during the Black Hawk Indian War of 1832, as it continues to do with contemporary explorers.

Liam O'Leary

The Ho-Chunk Indians still consider the river to be sacred, and it's easy to feel that calm, floating along the Bark.

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The Bark River is my backyard, childhood river. And yet, in a lifetime of travel, I’d never explored it.

I knew it carved the land from the Ice Age to settlement times, from the Black Hawk War of 1832 (in which young Abraham Lincoln appears) to the era of grist mills. But the Bark also flows past impressive Indian mounds. It nurtured poets, naturalists and farmers.

When former Marquette University professor Milton Bates published his Bark River Chronicles through the Wisconsin State Historical Society, I jumped at the chance to learn about the river with him.

The Bark River winds nearly 70 miles through southern Wisconsin and travels, literally, through the glacial lake on which my family lives — Nagawicka Lake — in the city of Delafield. It then flows southwest through the city of Fort Atkinson, where it joins the Rock River on its way to Lake Koshkonong. It’s part of the Mississippi watershed.

All my life, I’d ridden my bike past an old mill house in Delafield. A mill had been on that site since the 1850s. I wondered who lived there. I finally learned it was Margaret Zerwekh, who, at 93, is a serious local historian. She’s been there for half a century.

When Zerwekh’s late husband, Kenneth, bought the mill in 1947, the 19th-century building was dilapidated. But Kenneth, an engineer, was specifically looking for a mill to buy.

Fighting in France in World War II, Kenneth Zerwekh noticed that only the millers had power during wartime. He cranked the sagging structure up with pulleys attached to phone poles. He got the turbines going.

The canoe party paddles past "Sugar Island," where the Bark River flows through Nemahbin. The Potawatomi tapped these trees for sugar. I'd never known there was an island in Nemahbin Lake; it holds summer cabins. — The canoe party paddles past “Sugar Island,” where the Bark River flows through Nemahbin. The Potawatomi tapped these trees for sugar. I’d never known there was an island in Nemahbin Lake; it holds summer cabins. / Liam O’Leary

The hum, Margaret Zerwekh says, was the sound of “dollars and cents.” Until a few years ago, she milled her own electricity.

The Bark River (once called the “Peel Bark” River) got its name from the Ho-Chunk Indians, who erected temporary dwellings of bark shingles there. They mixed with the settlers. But in April of 1832, another tribe, the Sauk, was pushed out of Illinois. The Sauk warrior Black Hawk attacked northward along the Bark.

The war party hit and hid for months, a very bloody affair, with weeks of terror in which both sides took scalps. Black Hawk was undefeated until August.

Called in at last, it took Gen. Henry Atkinson several days to get his troops through the “quaking” muck of the Bark River shoreline to pursue Black Hawk. Ho-Chunk historian William Quackenbush told me the Ho-Chunk still consider the Bark sacred territory.

That’s a feeling I would have to share. On a bright fall day, with author Bates and his wife, Puck, we canoe six miles of the Bark, from the site of a Ho-Chunk encampment called Burnt Village up to Fort Atkinson.

Kingfishers, cedar waxwings, herons and ducks keep us company. Life travels slowly in canoe hours.

This was the Wisconsin I dreamed about growing up. I’d never put the river’s whole story together. Now I know that paddling the Bark River, I’m on a blue highway of American history.

My favorite view from the fourth floor of Margaret Zerwekh's mill house, looking east out on the Bark — herons use the river like a private causeway, and fish swim in the millrace. — My favorite view from the fourth floor of Margaret Zerwekh’s mill house, looking east out on the Bark — herons use the river like a private causeway, and fish swim in the millrace. / Liam O’Leary

Audio produced by Liz Baker.

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Jacki Lyden

Longtime listeners recognize Jacki Lyden's voice from her frequent work as a substitute host on NPR. As a journalist who has been with NPR since 1979, Lyden regards herself first and foremost as a storyteller and looks for the distinctive human voice in a huge range of national and international stories.

In the last five years, Lyden has reported from diverse locations including Paris, New York, the backstreets of Baghdad, the byways around rural Kentucky and spent time among former prostitutes in Nashville.

Most recently, Lyden focused her reporting on the underground, literally. In partnership with National Geographic, she and photographer Stephen Alvarez explored the catacombs and underground of the City of Light. The report of the expedition aired on Weekend Edition Sunday and was the cover story of the February 2011 National Geographic magazine.

Lyden's book, Daughter of the Queen of Sheba, recounts her own experience growing up under the spell of a colorful mother suffering from manic depression. The memoir has been published in 11 foreign editions and is considered a memoir classic by The New York Times. Daughter of the Queen of Sheba has been in process as a film, based upon a script by the A-list writer, Karen Croner. She is working on a sequel to the book which will be about memory and what one can really hold on to in a tumultuous life.

Along with Scott Simon, current host of Weekend Edition Saturday, and producer Jonathan Baer, Lyden helped to pioneer NPR's Chicago bureau in 1979. Ten years later, Lyden became NPR's London correspondent and reported on the IRA in Northern Ireland.

In the summer of 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Lyden went to Amman, Jordan, where she covered the Gulf War often traveling to and reporting from Baghdad and many other Middle Eastern cites. Her work supported NPR's 1991 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for Gulf War coverage. Additionally, Lyden has reported from countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Iran. In 1995, she did a groundbreaking series for NPR on Iran on the emerging civil society and dissent, called "Iran at the Crossroads."

At home in Brooklyn on September 11, 2001, Lyden was NPR's first reporter on the air from New York that day. She shared in NPR's George Foster Peabody Award and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Lyden later covered the aftermath of the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In 2002, Lyden and producer Davar Ardalan received the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television for best foreign documentary for "Loss and Its Aftermath." The film was about bereavement among Palestinians and Jews in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

That same year Lyden hosted the "National Story Project" on Weekend All Things Considered with internationally-acclaimed novelist Paul Auster. The book that emerged from the show, I Thought My Father Was God, became a national bestseller.

Over the years, Lyden's articles have been publications such as Granta, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is a popular speaker, especially on mental health.

A graduate of Valparaiso University, Lyden was given an honorary Ph.D. from the school in 2010. She participated in Valparaiso's program of study at Cambridge University and was a 1991-92 Benton Fellow in Middle East studies at the University of Chicago.

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