Yesterday in La Crosse
More attention for Elmer’s artworks, 12 years ago
Galesville sculptor Elmer Petersen was the subject of a magazine article in the spring of 2007. The Danish Immigrant Museum of Elk Horn, Iowa highlighted “The World’s Largest Buffalo,” a 26-foot high sculpture located in Jamestown, North Dakota. Petersen’s work was being displayed in a museum art exhibit honoring Danish-American artists. He’s well known in the Coulee Region for the sculpture of native Americans playing the game of lacrosse, and for the bronze eagle at the west end of State Street in downtown La Crosse.
La Crosse was expecting its biggest April snowstorm in years, and 5 inches of snow fell on Grandad Bluff, but the snow in the city of La Crosse amounted to little more than a dusting, enough to cover the grass in Riverside Park.
New barriers were being installed along the Mississippi at Riverside. That was part of the work being done to prevent future downtown drownings. City committees had done months of study, following the 2004 drowning death of local college student Jared Dion.
La Crosse musician Rob Gonzalez was performing at the La Crosse Center that April, and UW-L hosted a concert by a 17-year-old country singer who’s a major music star a decade later. Her name is Taylor Swift, and she performed at Cartwright Center in 2007, Yesterday in La Crosse.
