As La Crosse expanded commercially and residentially in the 1870s and 1880s, demand grew for local stone for building foundations and roads, and quarrying at Grandad and neighboring bluffs began as early as 1865. By the turn of the century, Grandad had become a tourist attraction and city landmark, yet it faced possible defacement after word spread in 1909 that property on the front side of the bluff had been sold to Norris Bacheller, a former La Crosse alderman and land speculator, amid rumors that he intended to cut down the trees and open another full-scale quarry. Public alarm and local outcry led citizens and businesses to organize a subscription to repurchase the property for the city, and Ellen P. Hixon, encouraged by her sons Frank and Joseph, gave $12,000 to begin the fund, while about twenty other local benefactors and companies added another $3,000 for adjacent lands, roads, and other improvements. By 1912 the Hixon family transferred the property to the city for use as a public park, saving the bluff. This effort also advanced a broader parks plan begun in 1908, when La Crosse created park districts and a Board of Park Commissioners, with Joseph Hixon as Director, and hired landscape architect John Nolen to design a system that blended urban life with the preservation of natural beauty, with Grandad and Miller Bluffs central to that vision. Grandad Bluff Park was later developed with a bluff-top shelter built by the Works Progress Administration in 1938, fencing, and paved paths, and its flagpole, first erected in 1941 with money contributed by area schoolchildren, was replaced in 1981 and 1994 and funded again in 1999 after high winds brought down the third pole. Since 1929, fireworks have been displayed annually from the top of Grandad on New Year's Eve, and over the last century the bluff has become a community icon and the heart of a city park.

Photo: Anonymous

Photo: Anonymous

Photo: Anonymous