The Backbone Trout Hatchery
By Vance Polton
Today I thought we would visit the Backbone Trout hatchery but instead of going straight back to the past as we usually do, we would first spend a little time in the present to compare "What is" to "What was".
When the hatchery was first being designed the "News from Manchester" section of the June 24th, 1921 edition of the Dubuque Telegraph had:
"The federal fish hatchery at Spring Branch, three miles east of here, was located after inspection of eight states and was said to be the finest location to be found, but in some respects the location for the state hatchery is superior. The buildings will be of brick, with tile roof, and the equipment will be fully as complete and the construction even better than the federal hatchery. The cost of this extensive work is not paid by taxation but comes from fishing licenses, and when completed will add much to the attractiveness of the State Park."
Construction of the new state fish hatchery wouldn't be started until 1925 and would take two years to complete. The first year of production wouldn't be until 1928 and consisted of: 63,100 brook trout fingerlings; 1,000 brook trout fry; 131,100 rainbow trout fingerlings; 5,000 rainbow trout fry; 10,000 loch leven (brown) trout fry; and 5,000 loch leven (brown) trout advanced fry.To say that the new hatchery had some interesting design features would, in my opinion, be an understatement: curved raceways, other raceways that ran at odd angles to each other, one large octagon -shaped pond; water that flowed across the top of the ground between ponds; They did have a nice fountain out front of the hatchery building although they lacked enough water pressure to properly operate it.
I've attached a map of the "pre-CCC rebuild" hatchery so you can see for yourselves some of the interesting features of the original hatchery grounds.
In the mid 1930's, the Civilian Conservation Corp Unit working in the Park did an overhaul of the hatchery grounds and gave her a more "modern" layout. I have also attached a copy of the CCC rebuild map. The remains of the CCC layout are what you see today if you stop and take a peek over the old hatchery's stone wall.
To give you some sense of what once was behind that lonely old stone wall in the Park I have also attached a couple of "Photo Heavy" newspaper articles. The first is from 1969 titled: Out of the Pond and into the Frying Pan" The other "Visitors Attraction Backbone State Trout Hatchery to Close" is from 1974 and talks about the State's efforts to close the Backbone Hatchery and take over the operation of the Manchester National Fish Hatchery.
