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Good
Roads
One of Senator Stout's chief contributions to the
improvement of rural life was championing road improvement. The
statewide Good Roads movement was inspired by the need for farm
to market roads, the advent of the automobile, and the bicycle
craze. He implemented his Model Road concept by constructing a
road from the Dunn County fairground east for one-half mile. It
was a twelve-foot stone road flanked by trees, an eight-foot earth
road on each side with a bicycle path on one extremity and a footpath
on the other.
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Traveling
Libraries
Always concerned for the educational needs of his rural constituency,
Senator Stout founded the Traveling Library concept for Dunn County
in 1896. Thirty-two traveling library boxes were available for circulation
from the Mabel Tainter Library. Each box contained 30 volumes of
varied reading materials including cookbooks, songbooks, and books
of games and sports, biographies, popular fiction, children's books
and magazines. Traveling Library locations included school houses,
country stores, homes, and the most popular location -- post offices.
Senator Stout was instrumental in the promotion of libraries throughout
the state. He was a key figure in the formation of the Wisconsin
Library Association. And, he successfully persuaded the Senate to
fund the Wisconsin Free Library Commission. The number of Wisconsin
libraries subsequently increased from 28 to 132 in just four years.
In order to train needed librarians, the Commission encouraged the
University of Wisconsin to initiate a librarians' summer education
program, which eventually evolved into the School of Library and
Information Science. The Commission also founded the Legislative
Reference Bureau, publisher of the Wisconsin Blue Book. |
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Old
Aggie
This building "Old Aggie" stood on the location of present-day
Fryklund Hall. From 1901 to 1957, it housed two important educational
institutions. The Dunn County School of Agricultural and Domestic
Economy was intended to offer practical instruction to country boys
and girls for their life work on the farm. The Dunn County Teachers'
College focused on training rural schoolteachers. The only requirement
for admission to the school was an eighth grade education with no
tuition charge. |
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Updated: July 2001 |