I met Mabel Long shortly after the West Wisconsin Land Trust (WWLT) purchased Maiden Rock Bluff through a partnership with the State of Wisconsin in 2004. Mabel was the daughter of Charles and Christina Long, dairy farmers who purchased the bluff and the surrounding farmland as newlyweds in 1915. Mabel shared a box of old family photographs with me which I scanned and included in my book about the bluff.
When Mabel’s parents bought their 248 acre farm in 1915, there were already over 1,000 farms in Pepin County, most of them small, family owned dairies. Between 1870 and 1910, cultivated land in the county grew more than tenfold, from 5,271 acres to 61,500. By the 1930’s many of the farmed bluff tops overlooking Lake Pepin had been transformed from native oak savanna to a patchwork of deeply eroded hillsides, fields, and cut-over woodlots. Remnants of the original goat prairies–dry grassy areas where the terrain was too steep or rocky to cultivate–were all that remained.
By 2004, the oak savanna and goat prairie on Maiden Rock Bluff was in danger of disappearing altogether due to the unchecked growth and proliferation of red cedar trees. Part of the project of restoration has involved ridding the bluff, especially the south-facing hillside above the limestone cliff, of these red cedars so the native oaks can thrive again.
The Long Family on Maiden Rock Bluff; standing far left, Fred and Milton Long; fourth from left, Mabel Long; seated in profile, Christina Long; standing far right, Harold Long, circa 1940’s.