TRANSCRIPT:
You’re listening to Parks and Landmarks, an exploration of the underrated, outdoors. I’m Sean Bull.
What’s your favorite local state park? Like, if you have a day off, and the weather is nice, where do you go to enjoy yourself? Maybe you climb the cliffs of Devil’s Lake, or paddle the lakes at Governor Dodge. If it’s summer, and you feel like driving, maybe you’ll go as far as Harrington Beach or Kohler-Andrae, and catch some waves. Every one of you is, I’m sure, a bit different. But I can say with confidence that none of you, at least at first, thought of Governor Nelson State Park.
Governor Nelson is a four hundred and twenty-two acre park, located northeast of Middleton, on the shore of Lake Mendota. It’s the closest state park to Wisconsin’s capitol, but despite this, it often tends to be overlooked. I think this is partly because of its terrain. Anyone who’s lived around Madison for a while is familiar with the kinds of marshes, prairies, and forests that surround the Yahara chain of lakes. Governor Nelson is all of those, and no more; the park offers no geographic surprises to a visitor, not a single pond or hill. From the north end of the park, you can kind of see where Dorn and Six Mile Creeks merge, but it’s not a feature the brochures really highlight.
Governor Nelson may not have a lot of obvious landmarks to see, but there’s still enough to do to justify making this a park, rather than a closed preserve. If any of you said, at the beginning, that your favorite park is Governor Nelson, it’s likely because you regularly go fishing. To that, hypothetical listener, I would say it still doesn’t count. Governor Nelson is your favorite boat launch, at best, but Lake Mendota is where you’re making the real fun memories. That said, this is one of the best boat launches in the area. It’s got plenty of space, but better yet, it’s intuitively designed to make maneuvering a trailer as easy as possible.
Farther up the shoreline, you’ll find beaches: one for pets, and one strictly for people. Both are accompanied by large picnic areas; in total, dozens of tables, shaded under mature trees. The pet swim area is more primitive. Its water entrance is small, and lined with little pebbles. It also features the oldest working outhouse I’ve ever seen, a rounded little tower, made (I think) of fiberglass, painted brown on the exterior. My older listeners won’t get my fascination with this artifact, but as someone raised entirely on plastic porta potties, that toilet offers me a look into an era long past.
Thankfully, that long-lived lavatory isn’t the only facility the park has to offer. The human swim beach is much better equipped, with a permanent shelter, and more civilized restrooms. The swim area itself has a sandy beach, relatively wide for something clearly manmade. The beach is flanked on either end by little rocky breakwaters, giving the bay both shelter, and a pleasing, sort of crescent shape.
Things are well maintained here, but this belies a long history of human habitation. As long as Madison has been inhabited by white settlers, people have escaped the isthmus for recreation on the far side of the lake. Over the last century, there were as many as three distinct summer camps, just within the modern bounds of the park. Those were Camp Indianola, Camp Maria Olbrich, and strangely, Camp Wakanda.
That last one gave me pause upon first reading it, because the word “Wakanda” is now a widely recognized cultural reference, one that has nothing to do with mid-century summer camps. Wakanda is now first recognized as a fictional African nation, technologically advanced, secretive, and home to the Black Panther, their monarch and superpowered protector. What does Marvel Comics’ invented African haven have to do with a camp that I’m sure was once the whitest place in Dane County? Believe it or not, there is at least a tenuous connection.
There’s a good Washington Post article that goes into much more detail, but before Stan Lee ever put Black Panther to print, Wakanda, in a few different spellings, was a popular name for American summer camps. The word comes from the religions of some plains Indians, who believe in Wakanda, kind of a creator god, but never personified, way more abstract. The word has many meanings, and white settlers latched onto Wakanda as more of an idealized space or realm, a mysterious faraway land you could journey to, with the hope of finding refuge, and attuning yourself with nature.
As a concept, that sounds like an ideal summer camp, so in an era before cultural appropriation was a concern, Camp Wakandas popped up all over the country. There’s no proof that the creators of Black Panther took the name of his home from a campground, but the word would have been in common use at the time to mean a mystical faraway refuge, and that’s exactly what the comic and movie Wakanda is. And here’s one more thing, a total coincidence. Governor Nelson Park features several intact Indian mounds. Most of them are simple cones, but the biggest and most complex of all the mounds in the park, right by the site of Camp Wakanda, is in the shape of a panther. How weird is that!
The land on Lake Mendota’s north shore has been used by humans for millennia, but the modern Governor Nelson Park is one of its last bulwarks against human encroachment. This is fitting, as the park is named for one of Wisconsin’s most prominent conservationists. The name Gaylord Nelson isn’t tossed around much these days, probably because just saying it would grind a middle school history class to a halt, but maybe it should be. I learned of Earth Day at a young age, but my class just kind of took its existence for granted. Of course there’s a day where you all go outside and plant trees; those Californians sure think of everything.
Imagine my surprise when, just a few days ago, I learned that Earth Day wasn’t some west coast hippie idea, but rather the brainchild of a straightlaced Wisconsin senator! It’s with this additional context that the park starts to make sense to me. Governor Nelson State Park does not have the spectacular beauty of many of Wisconsin’s state parks. It also can be a tough value proposition, compared to the excellent parks of Dane County. It’s bigger, and more full-featured than most of those parks, but county parks are free, and Governor Nelson isn’t, if you don’t already have a state parks sticker. But standing on the beach, you can turn one way to see hundreds of acres of habitat, lovingly preserved. Then, you turn back, look across the lake, and see the city, the skyline, the people whom the governor would never meet, but for whom he ardently fought for a clean and sustainable future. In this way, I think Governor Nelson State Park is a great encapsulation of the man’s legacy.
At press time it’s late fall, and swimming and boating season has come to an end. Still, Governor Nelson offers plenty of opportunities for recreation. As I detailed in a previous episode, a paved bike trail now connects the park to the village of Waunakee. Additionally, there are miles of paths for hiking, which as winter wears on, will open to snowshoeing and cross country skiing. The woodland Trail in particular has a detailed brochure, enabling visitors to guide themselves through an educational nature walk.
I probably talked about local history more than I should have today. The Wednesday news show already has a feature for this, and Stu is much better at this sort of research than I am. However, I couldn’t help but get sucked in. If you find local history as interesting as I do, and want to hear more about this area, you’re in luck. Tomorrow, from 7 to 8pm, local historian and author Don Sanford will be at the Westport town hall. He wrote a whole book on the human history of Lake Mendota, but for this event, he’ll be focusing specifically on stories from the area that is now Governor Nelson State Park. The event is free, and open to anyone to attend.
If you’d like to suggest a topic for Parks and Landmarks to cover, please send it my way, at sean.bull@wortfm.org. Tell me about your favorite underrated spot outdoors, or whatever you feel is related. This segment’s title is intentionally broad, so just go for it. I’d love to hear from you guys. Again, that’s s-e-a-n dot b-u-l-l at w-o-r-t-f-m dot org. For WORT News, I’m Sean Bull.