Culture
Prairie du Chien has five National Historic Landmarks and nine sites on the National Register of Historic Places representing its significant history. The five Landmarks were the first designated in the state.
It is close to Wyalusing State Park in Wisconsin, and Effigy Mounds National Monument and Pikes Peak State Park in Iowa, sites of natural and manmade wonders. Its rich history and location by the Mississippi River, make the city a popular destination for tourists. The Prairie Villa Rendezvous, a gathering to recreate the atmosphere of a 19th-century fur trading camp, has been held annually in the city every Father's Day weekend since 1975, it attracts tens of thousands of visitors.
In 2001, Prairie du Chien gained brief national attention for its first annual New Year's Eve celebration, during which a carp from the Mississippi River was dropped from a crane over BlackHawk Avenue at midnight. The "Droppin' of the Carp" celebration has been held every New Year's Eve since.
Hunting and fishing have long been popular in the area. The opening of Cabela's fourth outlet store in the city in 1998 firmly established the city as a destination for sportsmen.
Read more about this topic: Prairie Du Chien Area School District
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The white dominant culture seemed to think that once the Indians were off the reservations, they’d eventually become like everybody else. But they aren’t like everybody else. When the Indianness is drummed out of them, they are turned into hopeless drunks on skid row.”
—Elizabeth Morris (b. c. 1933)
“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
—Henry David David (1817–1862)