Mishicot Historical Museum

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Miscellaneous newspaper articles, brochures, ads, and ephemera related to the Jambo Creek Bicentennial celebration, which was held from June 9– 11 at the Mishicot Sportsmen’s Club Jambo Creek road near Mishicot, Wisconsin.

This article was prepared for a 1994–1995 Mishicot brochure:

A special 200th-anniversary celebration has been planned for June 1995 at the Jambo Creek area near Mishicot.

In 1795, an agent of the Northwest Fur Company of Canada named Jacques Vieau came to the creek area two miles west of present-day Mishicot. Landing at Two Creeks, he backpacked overland to this location, where he erected a fur trading post. This trading post was the first white settlement of any kind in what is now Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. It operated for about two decades.

Jacques Vieau traded his goods for furs with the Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians in the area . But they found his name very hard to pronounce, usually making it sound more like “Jambo.” This was the origin of the name for the trading post and the creek.

A one-room frame schoolhouse was built in 1873 near the trading post site, replacing an older log building. In later years, a Jambo Creek Community Club was organized, and met at the school.

In 1922 this club determined to mark the location of the home of the first white inhabitant of Manitowoc County, by setting up a six-foot-high memorial boulder. This rock, of native granite, was hauled one mile to its present site using a stoneboat and a team of four horses.

It stands 60 rods (996 feet) north of the location of the original fur trading post, and has a bronze plaque placed on it in memory of Jacques Vieau. The cast plaque was donated by the Nic Kettenhofen shop, Manitowoc.

The stone and plaque were set in the front yard of the Jambo Creek School. Though the school now is gone, the stone remains in place across the road from the Mishicot Sportsmen’s Club building. It is two miles west of Mishicot —Highway 147 to Jambo Creek Road and then one mile north. The Wisconsin Ice Age Trail also runs near the club grounds.

To mark the 200th anniversary of Jacques Vieau’s founding of the far trading post, a special Jambo Creek Bicentennial Days celebration has been scheduled for the June 9-10-11, 1995, weekend at this site, to be sponsored by the Mishicot Sportsmen’s Club and by M.A.G.I.C. and the Fox Hills Resort, with the help and cooperation of landowners in the Gibson area.

Plans include an encampment and a re-enactment of the French fur trade era, and may feature several professional groups, with teepees and lodges, a big canoe, a small cannon, historic church services, mock battles, and much more. The

public is welcomed. For detailed information, phone (414) 755-2525, or write to Bicentennial, Village Hall, E. Main Street, Mishicot, Wisconsin 54228. The Mishicot Museum is also scheduling special Jambo Creek historical exhibits for summer 1994 and 1995.