Badger History Group, Inc. Scrapbooks

Badger History Group, Inc. Scrapbooks
Badger Army Ammunition Plant
1 Badger Rd.
Baraboo, WI 53913
Website: www.badgerordnancehistory.org
Verlyn Mueller, President & Archivist
bhg-arch@tds.net

The Badger History Group was organized in 1998 as a committee of the Sauk County Historical Society. In November 2007 it was incorporated as an affiliate of the Wisconsin Historical Society and in March of 2009 it received IRS 501c3 status. To meets its mission “to collect, preserve and share the history of the Badger Army Ammunition Plant area,” the Badger History Group collects artifacts, archival materials and anything else that can be used to tell the story of the Badger Army Ammunition Plant Area.

The current archive includes materials brought to the Badger History Group by contractor employees cleaning out buildings in preparation for demolition. In addition the Badger AAP photo archive of an estimated 25,000 negatives is in the process of being scanned and cataloged. The archive also includes, scrapbooks from displaced farm families and other individuals; and materials collected and produced by Badger History Group staff. The Badger History Group currently occupies five rooms in the two-story Administration building at the Badger AAP.

This is a photo of some of the materials in the archive. The scrapbook in the foreground and the two open loose leaf binders are from an individual outside the Plant and contain photos, news clippings, and auction notices pertaining to Badger AAP from the Army’s selection of this site in 1942 to build this plant, to events leading up to plant closure. In back of these to the right is an expandable file of 8 x 10 photos from the Army archive. The stack of loose leaf notebooks and the materials to their left and in back are policies, operation reports, incident reports, training manuals from the Plant Guard and Fire Departments.

This is a close-up of the auction notice in the previous photo. In January 1942 the farmers received official notice to vacate with a deadline of March 1, 1942. During February there where actions like this one daily and sometimes two in one day.

This is a close-up of the 8 x 10 photos seen in the first image. The left image is an Instrument Man working on a Process control instrument with his supervisor looking on. The right photo is the installation of a mist eliminator at the Oleum (super strong Sulfuric Acid) Plant in the late 1960s.

This is a close-up of one of the photos in the scrapbook in the first image. The building is the two-story administration building built in the barnyard of the Anna M. Magli farmstead. The large tree was in the Magli front yard. Part of telling the story of the Badger AAP is to also tell the story of the people who lived on the farmstead that originally occupied a particular piece of land. When the Plant was built some of the farm buildings and houses were used for temporary warehouse and office space. That was the case with the Magli farm. The barn was used for warehouse space and the house for office and first aid station space. When they were no longer needed they were demolished. Anna Magli’s daughter lived on a farm south of the plant entrance and watched as the house she grew up in was burned.

This is a glimpse of the “story” that is the Badger Army Ammunition Plant Area; the story of the largest ammunition plant in the world. The story of an event that had the greatest cultural and economic impact on the Sauk Prairie since the pioneers started crossing the Wisconsin River to this new land in 1838.


Entry compiled by Carla Alvarez.
Photographs courtesy of Verlyn Mueller, President & Archivist of the Badger History Group.