Merrimack to Prairie du Sac
Take the launch at Merrimack for a river ride to the hydro-electric plant at Prairie du Sac. Down this river went Joliet and Marquette, the first white men in this region, in June, 1673. Duluth and Hennepin were the first to come up the stream in 1680. Down the waterway went a French force in 1727 to erect a Fort on the Mississippi, and along this course retreated, in 1760, the last French garrison of Machinac, seeking the Illinois country.
Other adventures and expeditions have disturbed these waters in times past and in the middle of the last century a procession of rafts plowed southward. Prior to the advent of the railroad a few river steamers dodged the sandbars as often as they could, but today naught but small craft course the stream.
The boatman may show you the location of Rosalietown, near where the river bends southward, a pioneer hamlet of which nothing now remains. The little cemetery has been eaten away by the river.