Second Installment: The Fox River

The Fox River runs through the heart of my city, Appleton, Wisconsin. As part of the historic Fox-Wisconsin waterway, the Fox once linked the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River via the Wisconsin River.¹ At what is now the city of Portage, in the center of southern Wisconsin, the Wauon Trail connected the Fox and Wisconsin watersheds, a relatively easy portage of 2,700 paces.²

For thousands of years, Native Americans plying the Fox and Wisconsin portaged at the Wauon Trail. In 1673, the first Frenchman, Father Jacques Marquette, ascended the Fox, hoisted his canoe onto his shoulders, and walked the 2,700 paces to the Wisconsin.³ He was soon followed by voyageurs and settlers as the Fox-Wisconsin waterway opened up the midsection of North America to European exploitation and settlement.

I, too, had paddled my baidarka on the Fox, exploring short, beautiful sections of both the upper and lower river in day-trips. But I had yet to give the baidarka what it deserved and what the Fox merited – a long, sustained voyage.

The Upper Fox, flowing from Portage to the city of Oshkosh and Lake Winnebago, is a gentler, more intimate, more isolated stretch of water than the Lower Fox, which descends through a series of rapids from Neenah, Menasha, and Appleton to Green Bay. The Upper Fox, slow and shallow, winds through marshes and past sloughs, through long, weedy lakes and beside pastures and cottages. Little towns are strung along its length, remnants of early river-crossings and steamboat stops. The steamboat trade flourished briefly on the Fox in the mid-nineteenth century before being eclipsed by the railroad, but it left stranded knots of humanity regularly spaced along the waterway, making convenient stopping points for a kayaker.

Over 100 miles in length, the Upper Fox can be paddled at a relaxed pace. A seven-day trip could be accommodated by stopping overnight at the towns and villages along the way. As I planned my voyage for spring of 2005, I opted instead for an eight-day trip beginning at Portage. By splitting one segment in two, I could allow for bad weather and give my body some recovery time. Besides, this would allow an extra day to stay at the charming Mecan River Lodge, five miles from Princeton, on a tributary of the Fox.

Water levels and insects were also on my mind. I needed to leave early enough in the season to benefit from higher water and stronger current, but not so early as to face cold, cloudy weather, and we had been having a very cool, damp April. I also wanted to beat the early-summer hatches of biting insects. A long-time canoeist, Linda Stoll, told me cautionary tales of miserable mid-summer experiences amid insect swarms on the Fox. So I settled on a start date of June 1st.


1. Kort, Ellen. The Fox Heritage: A History of Wisconsin’s Fox Cities, page 9. Windsor Publishing, October 1984.

2. Svob, Mike, and Elizabeth McBride. Paddling Northern Wisconsin: 82 Great Trips by Canoe and Kayak, page 10. Trails Books, 1998. (The maps herein were adapted from the maps in this book.)

3. Kort, Ellen. Id. at 23.


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