The Green Bay and Mississippi Canal Company and its predecessor, the Fox-Wisconsin Improvement Company, were private corporations organized to construct, administer, and finance improvement of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. These improvements were a reflection of a long-standing desire for an improved inland water transportation route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Although land speculation became the eventual focus of the corporation, the enterprises were originally formed primarily to improve transportation.
Formal efforts to improve the rivers began in 1848 with the creation of a five-member Board of Public Works. This state board was responsible for the administration and construction of waterway projects such as dams, canals, and dredging operations that were designed to increase the rivers' navigability. However, after a series of financial and construction problems, the state project was turned over to a private enterprise, the Fox-Wisconsin Improvement Company. Formed in 1853 by a group of prominent valley residents, including Morgan L. Martin, the corporation agreed to complete the improved waterway by July 1856. The corporation was eventually forced by poor economic conditions and inadequate local resources to permit Eastern investors to join the project; these investors later came to dominate the corporation. Yet, despite expanded land grants, extensive promotion by the governor and legislature, and an eventual trusteeship of the company by the legislature, the corporation was doomed. In 1866 the Fox and Wisconsin Improvement Company was dissolved.
That same year, the bankrupt company's property and lands were purchased by a group or Eastern directors, who then reorganized the company as the Green Bay and Mississippi Canal Company. The new group proposed to improve the channel of the Wisconsin River en route to the Mississippi. However the reorganized company did little actual improvement work during the six years (1866-1872) it was responsible for the project. In 1870 the federal government offered to buy out the group's interests and take over the entire line of the waterway. Two years later, the company accepted, although it retained for itself the valuable water power rights.
For additional background information on the Fox and Wisconsin River Improvement Company and the Green Bay and Mississippi Canal Company researchers should consult two published works, both of which are available in the Historical Library. These are: Millstone and Saw: The Origins of Neenah-Menasha, by Alice Smith, especially Chapter 2, “Improving the Fox River”; andThe Fox-Wisconsin Rivers Improvement: An Historical Study in Legal Institutions and Political Economy, by Samuel Mermin.
