Fox River (Wisconsin)
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- This article is about the river in central and eastern Wisconsin. For the unrelated river that begins in far southeastern Wisconsin, see Fox River (Illinois River tributary).
The Fox River is a tributary of the Bay of Green Bay in eastern and central Wisconsin. Geographers divide the Fox into two distinct sections, the Upper Fox River that flows from central Wisconsin into Lake Winnebago, and the Lower Fox River that links Lake Winnebago with Green Bay. Together, the two sections give the Fox River a length of 200 miles (322km).
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[edit] Geography
The Upper Fox River begins as a small stream northeast of Portage. It flows southwest towards that city and comes within 2 miles (3.2 km) of the Wisconsin River before quickly turning north. After flowing past Montello, the river goes northeast until reaching Lake Butte des Morts. Here it is joined by the tributary Wolf River before entering Lake Winnebago at Oshkosh. The Lower Fox begins at the north end of Lake Winnebago, where it flows north past Neenah, Menasha, and Appleton as it begins its 39 mile (64 km) course towards the Bay of Green Bay. The river drops around 164 feet (50 m) over this short stretch, and prior to the construction of European-style dams after 1850, the river had many sizable rapids. The Lower Fox ends after flowing through downtown Green Bay and into the Bay of Green Bay. Altogether, the Fox-Wolf watershed drains an area of about 6429 square miles (16,650 km²), giving the Fox an average discharge rate of 4132 ft³/s (117 m³/s) into the Bay of Green Bay. Because the general direction of the river is towards the northeast, the Fox is sometimes pointed to as one of the few North American rivers that flows north.
[edit] History
Prior to European settlement in the late 1600s, the shores of the Fox River and Green Bay were home to roughly half the 25,000 Native Americans who lived in what is today the State of Wisconsin. The first Europeans to reach the Fox were the French, beginning with Jean Nicolet in 1634. In 1673 explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet canoed up the river as far as Portage. Here they made the short portage from the Fox to the Wisconsin River and then canoed on towards the Mississippi River, establishing an important water route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River known as the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway. This route was used frequently by fur traders during the French colonization of the Americas. The French-Canadian men who established homes on the Fox River married First Nation women, producing a mixed-blood population similar to the Metis of Canada.
The Fox-Wisconsin Waterway's importance continued into the 1850s, when the Fox and Wisconsin Improvement Company built locks and dams on the Fox and a canal to connect it to the Wisconsin River at Portage. The company was hoping to establish Green Bay as a port city to rival Chicago by making Fox-Wisconsin Waterway into the principal shipping route between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. However, this goal was never reached, largely because the Upper Fox remained too shallow for significant shipping even after damming and dredging.
Instead of developing as a transportation corridor, the Lower Fox became a center of industry. During the mid 1800s, when Wisconsin was a leading producer of wheat, several flour mills sprang up along the river to harness its abundant water power. During the 1860s, as Wisconsin's wheat production declined, these flour mills were replaced by a growing number of paper mills. The Lower Fox proved an ideal location for paper production, owing to its proximity to lumbering areas that could supply wood pulp to make paper. Several well known paper companies were founded in cities along the river, including Kimberly-Clark, Northern Paper Mills (creator of Quilted Northern), and the Hoberg Paper Company (creator of Charmin).
[edit] Paper Industry
Many of paper companies founded in the Fox Valley have since merged into larger corporations or relocated their headquarters out of Wisconsin, but the Lower Fox remains a major area for paper production. There are currently 24 paper and pulp mills along the Lower Fox River that produce more than five million tons of paper per year and employ around fifty thousand people. The employment offered by paper mills and other industries has helped make the Fox River Valley from Lake Winnebago to Green Bay is one of the most heavily populated areas in Wisconsin. The Fox River flows through three of state's ten largest cities: Oshkosh, Appleton, and Green Bay.
[edit] Environment
The high concentration of paper mills and other industry along the Lower Fox have historically been the source of much pollution to the river. Public debate about this contamination began as early as 1923, but little was done to improve the river until federal legislation was passed in 1972. Much effort has since been put into cleaning the Fox, but problems still exist. According to some measures of pollution (e.g. dissolved oxygen, pollution-tolerant worm counts), the Lower Fox River is much cleaner than it was before 1972. However, according to other measures of pollution (e.g., phosphorus, estrogenic compounds, discarded pharmaceuticals), the river waters are slightly more contaminated than before 1972. As a result, debate over the river's contamination continues between environmentalists, the paper industry, Indian tribes, and elected officials at the federal, state and local levels.
While not officially designated as a U.S. Superfund site, the Lower Fox River bottom still has some sections contaminated with toxic chemicals. These contaminated sediments are the river's current environmental problem. One contaminant of special concern today is a group of chemicals called Polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. PCBs entered the river from many sources, but the largest deposits of contaminated sediments are traceable from the local paper recycling mills which have been part of the region's history, culture and economy, thus making it a difficult issue.
Since the late 1800s, dredging of river bottom sediments has been done to allow large ships to enter the Fox River. The contaminated sediment has been used since the 1960s to fill local wetlands and after 1978 to create an off-shore engineered holding area called Renard Isle aka, Kidney Island.
Among the wildlife in the Fox River Valley are birds such as mallard ducks, and fish such as walleye.
