The crown jewel to our Devil’s Punchbowl improvement has been put in place! Though the rain made it a damp, chilly experience it also made the digging a little easier. Rick Remington and Andrew Norman spent a morning removing the old sign, assembling, and installing this beautiful new one.
Thanks in large part to a grant from the Community Foundation of Dunn County we were able to have this beautiful sign made by the folks at Schmeeckle Reserve in Stevens Point. It serves as a greeting and a reminder that this beautiful, but fragile, local treasure is worth preserving.
The Devil’s Punchbowl is by far the most visited of our conserved lands. We spent two years raising the necessary funds and were happy to receive wide-spread community support for replacement of the old staircase leading to the first view of the bowl. It was a true community effort with design services contributed by Cedar Corporation and financial support from land trust members as well as the Community Foundation of Dunn County, Menomonie Noon Rotary, Dairy State Bank/Talen Trust, WESTconsin Credit Union, Dunn Energy, Unitarian Society of Menomonie, and lead sponsor Fairmont Santrol. We hope to continue to improve this beautiful and very popular destination for locals and visitors to the area.
The present day location of the park was historically known as Black’s Ravine for Samuel Black, a civil war captain who owned the site in the 1800s. The property was eventually owned by the township, followed by the Stout Foundation, and then transferred to WWLT in 1998.
The Punchbowl is open to visitors from sunrise to sunset every day of the year.
Left to right: Jolene Neisius, Dunn Energy; Jarrod McCurdy, Cedar Corporation; Clark Yolitz, Dairy State Bank/Talen Trust; Jeff Jaeger, WESTconsin Credit Union; Jim Eggert WWLT member; Paul Helgeson, Unitarian Society of Menomonie; Georgina Tegart, Community Foundation of Dunn County; Lauren Evans, Fairmont Santrol; Bob Fitzwilliam, WWLT Executive Director; Andrew Norman, WWLT Conservation Specialist.