By Therese Kattner
Northside News
History
The history of Warner Park could be said to go back 125 years, when a group of Madisonians built a scenic drive along a strip of Lake Mendota beach. The 2,200-foot beach was a popular swimming spot for families with small children because of its sandy bottom and shallow depth. Since then, the history of the park has been closely tied to water and how humans use it.
The members of the Madison Park and Pleasure Drive Association (MPPDA), which built the scenic drive, might be surprised at the size and scope of Warner Park today. In addition to the beach, the 213-acre park has a boat launch, a dog park, sports facilities, and one of the city’s largest community recreation centers.
An 1893 letter to the Wisconsin State Journal from W.R. Bagley, one of the MPPDA’s founders, suggests that not everything along the lake was ideal, however. Parts of the marshland next to the lakes had become dumping grounds — “the home of the oyster can and the ash heap,” he wrote. There would be plenty of work to do to make the park what it is today.
The park was named after Ernest N. Warner, MPPDA president from 1912 until his death in 1930. Before his death, he asked the MPPDA to acquire the beach for the public. Shortly after his death, the group announced that it would raise the funds to purchase the beach in Warner’s memory.
The Depression made fundraising difficult, so to make the project eligible for federal work relief funding, the MPPDA transferred the beach to the Madison city government, according to a Warner Park history by Madison’s Parks Division.
During World War II, local civic groups helped build beachside amenities, including a pier and a bathhouse, for service people who accessed the beach while stationed at Truax Field. The structures were removed after the war ended, but a new bathhouse was built in the early 1960s.
This structure was replaced with a beach shelter finished in spring 2021. In addition to providing restrooms and changing areas, it houses the pump room of a “clean beach treatment system.” This system uses physical barriers to set aside a pool of clean lake water for swimming. It treats this water with filters instead of chemicals such as chlorine to remove E. Coli and algae blooms, keeping swimmers and the lake itself healthy.
Water quality
The park’s history has long been tied to Lake Mendota and Madison water management.
The 1912 installation of the Tenney Lock, which raised Lake Mendota’s level by about 5 feet, changed the face of the adjacent low-lying land. It flooded and became known as Castle Marsh, named after a farmer who had owned a portion of the land. The marsh became good for fishing, especially northern pike and bass.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the city purchased more parkland and dredged part of Castle Marsh to create Warner Lagoon, a shallow, 28-acre lagoon that today connects to Lake Mendota by a 6-foot concrete pipe at the lagoon’s west edge.
The projects gave Madison’s growing population more recreational space. In addition, the lagoon helped buffer the lake from contaminants in the storm sewer runoff from the city’s rapidly developing Northside.
Unfortunately, with these changes, the Warner Park lagoon soon had water quality problems of its own, according to “The Flow of the Water: A History of Warner Park” by Trish O’Kane. An official from the Wisconsin Conservation Department (a precursor to the Department of Natural Resources) filed a report in 1959 noting that the pike population had already taken a hit.
Warner Park had been a great spot for fishing in the 1950s and 1960s, said Northside resident and Yahara Fishing Club member Jack Hurst, but today the Warner fish population struggles. “Since the late 1980s, fish have been dying off,” he said.
One cause is an overabundance of common carp, which were intentionally brought to Wisconsin waters in the 1880s as a food source, but soon began to be seen as a nuisance. Carp compete with other fish for resources. They also harm water quality by uprooting native underwater plants, which makes the water cloudy and less hospitable to desirable aquatic plants.
Another cause of water quality problems is stormwater runoff that has increased the sediment and nutrients in the lagoon. The area that drains into the lagoon today is a little more than 1,000 acres of mostly residential land.
The lagoon is also home to Firebird Island — formerly known as Fireworks Island— that was for 20 years the launch site for the Rhythm and Booms July 4 fireworks display.
Branded as the Midwest’s largest fireworks display, they drew thousands of spectators, with attendance in some years reaching 250,000. Some of its proceeds went to local charities such as the American Family Children’s Hospital.
But some community members were concerned about the event’s impact on water quality and park wildlife, which includes deer, foxes, mink, beavers, muskrats and 141 bird species. The community members formed a group, Wild Warner, and pressed the city to investigate. A study of lagoon water before and after the 2013 fireworks show found a spike in perchlorate, most likely from firework propellant. The group also found debris in the water following the event.
As a result of such findings, the 2013 display was the last in Warner Park. The following year, Rhythm and Booms was held along Lake Monona. It was supplanted by a new fireworks event, Shake the Lake, in 2015. That event, too, was dropped in 2020.
Improvements
Some of the work being done to improve the park today seeks to resolve the longstanding carp and sediment issues.
In 2021, a mix of government and public groups released a Warner Lagoon Water Quality Plan. They identified 13 potential projects to improve the lagoon’s water quality and its quality as a fishing and recreational site.
In fall 2022, a channel from the lake to Woodward Drive was dredged.
Another project, replacing a carp barrier, was recently completed, Hurst said. The barrier, which sits across an inlet to the lagoon, is open when pike move from Lake Mendota to the lagoon to spawn. It is shut before carp, which spawn later in the year, try to make the same move, Hurst said.
Not all recent improvement projects focus on water quality, however. For example, an accessible fishing pier on the lagoon went up in 2020.
In addition, Madison is expanding the Warner Park Recreational Center at 1625 Northport Drive. The $5.1 million expansion will add 12,000 square feet, including a second multipurpose gym. The center is a 32,000-square-foot structure built in 1999. About 260,000 people use the center each year. Construction could begin as early as September, according to the Madison Parks Division.