By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Program to present 180-year-old artifacts
40571a.jpg
Pictured is of the first survey map, made in 1831, for Green County, showing Demun's trading post on the west side of Sugar River and the Winnebago village he traded with on the east side, just down river from Decater Lake. (Photo supplied)
MONROE - Tom Fey will present 180-year-old artifacts, including muskrat traps and fire steels, from the 1986 and 1987 University of Wisconsin archeological excavations along the Sugar River of the Demun site during the Green County Historical Society program.

The program is set for 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 19 at the Monroe Public Library, 925 16th Ave.

One of the most colorful characters in Green County's history was aristocratic French fur trader, Jules Demun, who fled Paris to escape the French Revolution as a boy. He led a party of trappers west to the edge of the Spanish Borderlands in Colorado. Demun was thrown into the dungeons of Santa Fe for trespassing on the King's territory and escaped being shot.

Demun came up the Mississippi and spent a few days along the banks of the river with John James Audubon hunting birds in 1831. In the same year, he established a trading post in Green County overlooking the Sugar River.