Baraboo may help save Badger plant cemeteries

By Brian D. Bridgeford, Capital Newspapers

Baraboo should join other interested parties to preserve three historic family burial grounds within the Badger Army Ammunition Plant, a municipal committee said Tuesday.

Sauk County Historical Society Executive Director Orris Smith spoke before Baraboo's Administrative Committee and appealed for the city to join other governments and private community groups organizing an effort to save the small, endangered cemeteries.

In the proposed memorandum of understanding he presented to the committee, they are the Pioneer Cemetery, Thoelke Cemetery and Miller Family Cemetery. The cemeteries are among the last remnants of the many farm families the federal government moved off the 7,400-plus acres at Badger so it could build the weapons propellant plant during World War II.

With the federal government transferring Badger property to other users, maintenance of the cemeteries normally would go to the town of Sumpter, said Administrative Committee Chairman Gene Robkin.

However, Sumpter officials say they cannot afford to maintain the burial grounds.

DOD officials have estimated the annual cost of maintenance at $6,500, Robkin said. However, that estimate is based on an overpriced government contract, he said.

Seventeen groups, including Sauk County, the Ho-Chunk Nation, Sumpter Township, the Department of Natural Resources and Badger History Group are possible participants, the MOU document shows.

"We certainly maintained the interest that they are maintained and kept up," Smith said. "We do know from extensive history of genealogical research and things, it is important to us that they be maintained with a dignity as they have been."

If the city accepts the MOU, it only agrees to work with others to try to find a way to maintain the cemeteries, Robkin said

"This does not obligate anyone to come up with any money," Robkin said. "It does obligate them to make a very good-faith effort."

The committee members voted unanimously to send the issue forward to Tuesday's City Council meeting. The meeting will take place at 7 p.m. in Baraboo's city hall at 135 4th St."