Buried forest in Manitowoc County was first uncovered in 1907. Its discovery changed views on age of last glacier coming through Wisconsin.
TWO RIVERS – The discovery of two wood pieces suspected to be part of a buried forest may be news to us, but readers have been fascinated with the story since geologists first found some hidden tree stumps more than a century ago.
The forest, known as Two Creeks Buried Forest, was included in a television program about the history of the world back in the 1950s, and students from all over — including a guy from Ireland — made the trip to see the buried forest firsthand.
One group of University of Wisconsin-Madison students came to the site and went back to the classroom with 27 different types of mosses, a pillage not likely to happen these days.
The current-day story began in April 2024, when a small group of experts, joined by the landowner, recovered two relic fragments of wood along the Lake Michigan shoreline that might date to the final glacial advance of the last great Ice Age — or about 13,500 years ago.
The Herald Times Reporter published a story about the discovery June 8. The next day, reporter Patti Zarling received an email from Glenn Coenen, whose father was a park ranger at Point Beach State Park more than 50 years ago.
Coenen wrote: “Winnie Smith owned the property the buried forest is on and lived there. She worked for my dad as a naturalist in the park. My dad, Orville Coenen, and Winnie, discovered/identified the petrified forest way back then.”
That conversation with Coenen led the Herald Times Reporter to do some more digging, and both the Manitowoc County Historical Society and newspapers.com helped reveal more details about the forest. Here's what we learned.
When was the hidden forest discovered?
A Jan. 23, 1951, newspaper article notes the forest was first discovered in the Two Creeks area in 1907.
Parts of the ancient forest became exposed as Lake Michigan waves cut banks into the shore, revealing tree trunks and logs buried under clay.
Studying glacial marks on wood fragments from spruce and other trees — in addition to carbon testing — helped geologists determine its age and history.
The Two Creeks fragments were sent to experts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for authentication. They determined the pieces were at least 11,400 years old.
“For a century, geologists have been checking over a gigantic ice cap which once moved down from the north,” the newspaper story said. “An ancient forest and peat bed buried in the cliffs of Two Creeks is the only known spot in America where a forest was trapped, above and below, by glaciers.”
The forest location is described as 2 miles south of the Manitowoc County-Kewaunee County line and north of the city of Manitowoc along Lake Michigan.
Why does the discovery matter?
The Two Creeks forest is unique in that it revealed the striping of the 30-foot bank where the glacier came grinding along, where the ice receded and how the spruce forest grew, only to be crushed between another ice invasion.
“By making tests on the stumps sticking out of the buried forest, scientists figured out the spruce forest was ground down by the ice 11,400 years ago,” the news article said. “The new date is headline news to geologists who had been thinking the last ice melted 25,000 years ago.”
Who was Winnifred Smith?
Winnifred Smith was likely a perfect person to own land that was part of the buried forest.
Old newspapers report she created an art studio and nature center at her and her husband’s home, called “Winghaven,” located near Point Beach State Forest.
In addition to volunteering as a naturalist at the state park, Smith was a state officer of the Ornithological Society. She not only designed her gardens to be bird-friendly, but molded decorative birds out of clay and wood, the newspaper article said.
Smith led field trips along the lakeshore area and taught nature lessons in local elementary schools and at the University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc. She gave tours of her home and gardens to women’s clubs, garden clubs and students.
Were any other discoveries made related to the forest?
The buried forest was well known and visited back in the 1950s and 1960s, but not much was written about it after the 1960s, according to the newspapers.com archives.
A June 20, 1960, newspaper article did describe some trees found by road crews in the Memorial Drive area. The story noted excavating crews laying sewers north of Manitowoc city limits uncovered tamarack, a type of tree, that was “at least 11,000 years old” and “tamarack that old was never found further north of Iowa and southern Wisconsin until now.”
“The stumps were soft and spongy when discovered (along the lake,)” the article said. “But they retained all the appearance of the original structure. Logs and stumps pointed significantly southwest, the direction in which the just-found tamarack pointed and the direction towards which the ice moved.”
Geologists confirmed those wood fragments likely were part of the buried forest.
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What will happen to the recently discovered relic fragments?
The two recently discovered relic fragments of wood are housed at the Weis Earth Science Museum. Visitors can learn more during an open house June 25 at the museum, which is on the UW Oshkosh Fox Cities Campus at 1478 Midway Road, Menasha. Scott Schaefer, interim director of the Weis Museum, will conduct free tours from 3 to 7 p.m. that day.
The team of geologists hopes to return to the site this summer to see what new materials or evidence of the hidden forest are exposed by waves and summer storms.
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“This is a reminder of the ways Wisconsin was affected by the very end of the glaciers before they moved back to the Arctic area,” Schaefer said.
The museum hopes to raise funds to send samples to a laboratory for radiocarbon testing to verify they are, indeed, remnants of the Two Creeks Buried Forest.
Contact reporter Patti Zarling at [email protected] or call 920-606-2575. Follow her on X @PGPattiZarling and on Instagram @PGPatti.
This article originally appeared on Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter: Hidden forest in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, revealed age of glaciers
