The Dayton’s name was coming down at Valley View, 18 years ago

In the fall of 2001, Dayton’s stores were switching to the name Marshall Field to take advantage of the Chicago chain’s popularity. The Dayton-Hudson company had built La Crosse’s Valley View Mall, opening it in 1980, with the Dayton’s store facing Highway 16. Marshall Field eventually gave way to Macy’s, which pulled out of Valley View in 2017. Herberger’s moved its mall store into the old Dayton’s-Macy’s space until it also closed a few months later.

An abandoned south-side La Crosse motel was being used for SWAT training. The old Wishing Well Motel on Mormon Coulee became a practice site for the La Crosse emergency response team. One of the county’s earliest meth lab cases led to the arrest of two people at the Wishing Well.

On one Wednesday night in October of 2001, there was a wide variety of entertainment around the city. The Ying Quartet performed at the UW-L student union. The Happy Twirlers square dancing group was at the Concordia Ballroom, with Les La Lone as the caller for the evening. A deejay calling himself ‘Major Mal Funktion’ was at the 3-24 Tavern on Jay Street, just a few blocks from the La Crosse Center, where Bob Dylan put on a concert. It happened one night, yesterday in La Crosse.