On the shores of the Gile Flowage, a group about 30 people gathered under the pavilion at Gile Park as strong winds blew and rain poured down.
“Welcome to beautiful, rainy Iron County,” said Iron County Forest Administrator Eric Peterson. He led a dedication ceremony to celebrate the county’s purchase of 1,100 acres of land along the flowage.
Six years passed from when Xcel Energy offered to sell the land to when the purchase was completed.
“It's worth it. It's a good acquisition for the county, it's right for the people of the county, and to have those lands protected and available for public use and tribal use, it's the right thing to do,” said Peterson.
The Gile Flowage is a 3,400-acre lake in northern Iron County. It was created by the building of the dam in the 1940s.
Full of rocky islands and home to a range of wildlife species, the Gile Flowage is one of the last undeveloped large water bodies in the state.
Friends of the Gile Flowage President Cathy Techtmann worked with the county throughout the process.
“It's one of the last undeveloped large lakes left in Wisconsin with intact habitat systems and a lot of critical wildlife, wildlife corridors, excellent water quality. They don't make these anymore,” said Techtmann. “It's also unlike other Wisconsin lakes, it's a Laurentian Shield lake, so it looks like the Boundary Waters. It has aesthetic values that are really unique to Wisconsin.”
Techtmann encourages people to come and enjoy “your flowage” as one member of the Friends of the Gile Flowage group referred to it as.
The Xcel Energy land was purchased with a $4.1 million grant from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law via Wisconsin Coastal Management and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. $1.5 million also came from the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program.
Wisconsin DNR Deputy Secretary Sam Pankratz spoke at the ceremony.
“These are the types of projects when we talk about our future generations to know that wild places like this still exist for our young ones,” said Pankratz. “We were just talking before, my dad and my grandpa always said they're not making any more land, and so what we do with the land that we have is super important.”
The project received support from local municipalities, tribes, and conservation groups.
Iron County is currently surveying users for input on what they want to see with the flowage.
