The Dividing Ridge/Dead Lake Ridge

The Dividing Ridge, like most of Madison's physical landscape, was formed by the glaciers as they dug through and then retreated from the area.

Left a long gravel ridge between lakes Monona and Wingra. Very steep and 75 feet high at its tallest point, 30 to 150 feet wide. Known as the Walnut Mounds, Dead Lake Ridge and the Dividing Ridge.

The ridge was used by ancient American Indians as a campsite and workshop. A trail wound along the crest, and another followed its base on the Lake Monona side. Many effigy mounds were built on the ridge, some as much as10 feet tall, Thunderbird, water spirit, turtle, conical and linear. Many of the mounds were graves.

In 1859 Increase A. Lapham, Wisconsin's first scientist, platted the mounds as part of his survey of the antiquities of Wisconsin. By that time some of the mounds had already been removed by settlers who purchased land upon the ridge, others were ruined by thieves looking for artifacts.

In 1870, builders began removing the Dividing Ridge for the gravel to make streets. J.H. Pieh and Elisha Keyes opened gravel pits on the ridge. By 1915 the Dividing Ridge was almost gone.

All that remains of the Dividing Ridge is a small park above the bear dens of the Vilas Park Zoo. This land was purchased by the city in 1910 and 1913. There were originally 11 effigy mounds in this park; eight remain.

Charles E. Brown, Madison's premier archaeologist of the early part of the last century, said that "the destruction of the Dividing Ridge was a crime which should never have been perpetuated. It was one of Madison's most charming scenic features."

Madison's Catholics once had a cemetery on the ridge. Beginning in 1845 the 3 acre cemetery was named Greenbush. Eventually the deceased were moved to the new catholic cemetery.

Isthmus Once Had A Third Ridge In Wingra Area
Madisonians usually think the Isthmus has only two ridges -- one on the north along Johnson Street and the other on the south along Spaight Street.
But it originally had a third, much more dramatic, ridge that has almost entirely vanished.
Dead Lake Ridge, also called Dividing Ridge, rose eight stories high as it wrapped around the northeast shore of Lake Wingra through the Vilas neighborhood for half a mile. For centuries, it was used as a burial ground by Native Americans, who covered it in effigy mounds. In 1859, Increase Lapham found "two quadrupeds, one bird, one mound with lateral projections, five oblong, and twenty-seven circular tumuli," or mounds, along its slopes.
Early Catholic immigrants followed suit and put a graveyard there in 1845. But after 1865 they moved their graves to Calvary Cemetery on the West Side.
The Indian remains suffered a worse fate. As Madison expanded in the late 19th century, its marshes and lakeshores were filled in to create city blocks. Starting in about 1870, a pair of gravel companies went to work at opposite ends of Dead Lake Ridge and gradually dumped it into the lakes, with no regard for 1,500 years of sacred remains.
By 1920, the ridge was all but gone. Archaeologist Charles Brown, who watched the desecration but could not stop it, called the destruction of Dividing Ridge "a crime which should never have been perpetrated."
Today, the only surviving fragment of Madison's most historic ridge looms above the bear exhibits in the Vilas Zoo. Eight mounds are preserved in a nearby neighborhood park -- all that remain of its archaeological treasures.