Symco to Highway 22:
An “interlude” between two more popular trips, this segment of the Little Wolf doesn’t raise the Class II hackles of Big Falls or the yahoo heckles in rental tubes in between Royalton and New London. But it does have pleasant riffles, impressive boulders, clear water, and as of late 2024 a novelty no other segment has: a rare opportunity to paddle through a former millpond and see a riverine ecology recover before your eyes.
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆
Trip Report Date: October 8, 2025
Skill Level: Beginner
Class Difficulty: Riffles, quietwater, and one set of Class I rapids before the takeout.
Gradient:
≈2.5′ per mile
Gauge Recorded on this Trip:
Royalton: ht/ft: 1.3 | cfs: n/a
Gauge note: Gauge discontinued in June of 2020.
Recommended Levels:
This is the lowest recommended level.
Put-In:
Symco Park off Highway 22, Symco, Wisconsin
GPS: 44.51326, -88.90482
Take-Out:
Wayside park off Highway 22/Cemetery Road, Manawa, Wisconsin
GPS: 44.43934, -88.92846
Time: Put in at 12:30p. Out at 3:45p.
Total Time: 3h 15m
Miles Paddled: 8.5
Wildlife:
Bald eagles, painted and snapping turtles, muskrat, great blue herons.
Shuttle Information:
6.25 miles
Background:
For a river that’s two hours from where I live, I sure do love the Little Wolf – this was my ninth trip on its beguiling waters since 2012. (To be fair, six of those trips have been on the fabulous segment from the DNR landing to Big Falls, also known as “Little Wolf River 1” in Mike Svob’s Paddling Southern Wisconsin.) Barry first got up there a year earlier, in 2011, and paddled the Manawa to County X trip (which incidentally is “Little Wolf River 2” in Svob’s cosmology). In between those two trips are roughly 25 miles that the Venerable Svob alludes to as “tamer” than above Big Falls “but scenic.” I explored one clip of this interregnum, from Big Falls to Highway 110, back in 2019 – and felt like a king afterward!
But as incurably curious (and slightly OCD) as I am, wondering “what’s next?” and connecting river segments, I’d paid no mind to the handful of miles leading to the small city of Manawa. Why? Because since the 1890s there has been one kind of dam or another that has slowed the Little Wolf here and made a fake lake to have to slog through.
That is, until July 5, 2024, when torrential rain caused the river to rage and overwhelm the aging dam, resulting in a breach that in turn drained the millpond. For the first time in 130+ years, the Little Wolf flowed freely through Manawa. While this was encouraging news for river lovers and ecologists alike, many local residents and town officials felt quite differently. Before the floodwaters had even dried, talk about repairing or replacing the dam rebounded. Over a year has passed since, but no ultimate decision has been made. Needless to say, the topic remains contentious and controversial. More on that below.
In April of this year, a friends group of the Little Wolf reached out to Miles Paddled and asked us if we’d be willing to paddle through the former millpond and help get the word out about the recovering ecology. Twist our arm! The question was when, not if.
Overview:
There’s excellent parking and rough but decent access at Symco Park, where uneven concrete down the embankment requires careful footing to carry your boat to the water. Spirited riffles in a modest boulder garden await in a 50-yard dash only seconds after launching from the banks. It’s a flashy start to a trip.
Thereafter, the river quiets to a slow flow over a sand-gravel bottom past swaths of trees with a hint of a floodplain feel and farms beyond. Then everything opens up, the landscape now entirely meadowy. This pattern will alternate for the next few miles. After the mouth of Blake Creek appears on the right, a series of long straightaways follows. Fortunately, the river is tree-flanked on both sides. A small cedar-lined ridge on the right subtly diverts you eastward for a minute. It’s a short but haunting vignette with the southern sun impossibly tasked with streaking through the thick scraggles of cedar and mixed deciduous facing north. Suddenly, the world darkens. A few paddle stokes later, the world is illuminated once more.
Aptly if not animatedly named Bridge Road appears next, where there’s a dedicated (and less dodgy) landing on the downstream side, river-right. It’s been two miles since Symco.
A steeper ridge comes into view downstream, conifer-crowned and beckoning, before you bend to the left. To our surprise, vestiges of the millpond were already in view – almost a full four miles above the dam itself! – by way of water lines and watermarks. By “vestige” I mean a discernible stratification between where the river’s surface is today to where it had been before the dam breached – a few feet above the banks. To be clear, there’s a difference between any given river’s ordinary high water mark (aka OHWM) and this river’s former millpond surface level. Following a very warm, very dry August and September, we were well below the OHWM on our October paddle.
Discerning where that line ends and the average level for the millpond began is awash in nuance. But when a uniform line demarcates the banks several feet above the water for miles on end, then it’s reasonable to infer that’s how far back the impounded water had gone. Here, this simply means the river was much deeper; the millpond proper did not extend this far back. Nonetheless, the presence of docks, piers, and stairs that presently lead to nowhere (or at least to no water) all indicate that even this far upstream property owners took advantage of the river being more like a slow skinny lake than a sinuous, shallow stream.
For an entire mile the river lazily drifts to the east in long straightaways with nary a meander or kink to it. But then it elbow jabs to the right, then to the left, accentuated with a dabble of admirable boulders. Here, the ghostly waterline etched around the rocks was a good foot above the river’s surface. A long but lean island tempts paddlers like a siren’s song to try their luck in a shallow side channel – the first of several to come, many newly submerged after having been drowned for a hundred years. Along the banks, the water-line continues noticeably 3’ above the river. As the heron flies, we’re still miles from the dam.
Other than a shiver of riffles here and a bevy of boulders like motionless hippos there, the river flutters little as it tilts southwestward past a few more out-of-place piers, boat ramps, and backyards. The unnatural juxtaposition of these becomes increasingly surreal as you venture downstream. An impressive island braids the river in two, after which more houses express their backsides to the river from both banks – now with increasing distance. By and by, here the heavy footprint of the dam begins in earnest. The whole area has the appearance and feel of a marsh (thanks, Captain Obvious!), since it more or less was one for a very long time until only a very short time ago. There are no trees – presumably having been felled before the dam and/or killed by back-flooding after it. And the banks are mostly low, since any vegetation has had only a year to return. Remarkably, the river’s original channel is still intact, as ever.
Meanwhile, the un-submerged earth recovers its breath – and it’s a wild landscape whose resiliency – its memory – is positively astonishing! Maybe a better way of expressing it isn’t memory so much as “rememory,” the neologism Toni Morrison coined in Beloved, re-encountering in the present trauma from the past. It’s rather like the opposite of the tagline from Field of Dreams: if you destroy it (the dam), the landscape will come back. Today, it’s only a single year’s worth of shrubby stubble and grasses – a five o’clock shadow on the face of a riparian landscape. Give it a decade and the blend will be almost seamless, a Sam Beam beard worthy of combing. A generation from now would never know the difference – might well wonder why in the world would anyone drown such a pretty place to have an artificial stagnant lake…?
To see drone video of what the landscape looks like now (re: autumn 2025), see here.
Past a sad pier whose purpose shrugs like shoulders seven feet above and several feet away from the river, and a county boat launch after it, both on the left, the river loops northeast to southwest – the most dramatic meander on this entire trip (and totally invisible on contemporary satellite maps, where the amorphous millpond still appears). Here is where the millpond was most prominent, where now the distance between pier or backyard to any splash of water ranges from 200’ to 900’. As the river flows, it’s about 1.5 miles to the dam. Unsurprisingly, the river is very shallow here, as century-old sediment (or what I like to call “calcified mud”), built up like fudgy sludge behind the dam gates, still clings to the bottom here and there. It’s the same kind of muck compact we’ve encountered on other rivers above removed or partially removed dams, such as the Upper Iowa River approaching the Lower Dam, Mill Creek in Richland County, and Koshkonong Creek above Rockdale.
Three sets of attractive sandbanks now rise above the river after having been buried for a hundred years. The first is 5’ tall and offers eye-witnessed habitat to turtles. Elsewhere, swallows have already pocked hollows for homes into the brittle banks. The third lies below the wrought-iron railing to the cantilevered pier at Veterans Freedom Park. Now set back from the river, it hovers above it at least 10-12′ high. Interestingly, the top of the banks here demonstrate wave-like layers like rippling strips pressed into the sand.
A short straightaway leads to the dam itself. Today, the powerhouse, gates, and spillway all remain. What breached in July 2024 was the west-most wall (river-right), which is where the Little Wolf now gently rolls through – there are no riffles or hiccups here. To be sure, the dam is more a sore site for eyes than a sight for sore eyes. But as far as ruins go, it’s truly fascinating. After all, how often does one get such a close encounter with a structure like this? Dams are dangerous – they’re lethal. So this felt a little like exploring a dead alligator or dragon. You can see its bones, its tissues, its gnashing teeth… It’s the paddling equivalent of traipsing about an abandoned factory.
For point of reference, it’s now been 6+ miles since Symco, with another 2.75 miles to the takeout.
Below the dam, trees line the banks again. Since this “successive” section wasn’t impacted by the dam (at least in terms of pent water), it looks and feels like how this trip began up near Symco. The river is about 80’ wide, a bit deeper and more meandering than before. A stately railroad bridge looms before you – a future adjunct to the Tomorrow River State Trail once funding is secured. At the time of this writing, the bridge is closed off at both sides. Back on the water, a dollop of ginormous boulders has been dropped like so much geologic candy, some of the most attractive on this trip. These bathing behemoths are followed by the low-lying bridge at County Road B.
Shortly downstream from the bridge is the first/only exciting rapids on this trip, where an island cleaves the river in two channels. The right side was blocked by fallen trees and would have been too shallow anyway. The left channel provides an easy but still really fun Class I that’s funneled through arranged rock piles like wing dams. It’s just enough to stir your heart and paint a smile on your face!
The remaining half-mile is SLOW and painfully straight. But handsome stands of pines like a frontline guard, additional boulder gardens, and a cheery mix of deciduous trees augment the relatively dull denouement leading to the convenient takeout at a wayside park – on river-right about 150′ upstream of the Highway 110/22 bridge.
What we liked:
For a relatively short trip, there’s impressive diversity found on and along the river here. It may not be the most exciting or aesthetic section of the Little Wolf, but it’s uniquely revealing.
It’s hard not to adulate over translucent water! While the footprint of agriculture certainly has a toehold on the area, the river remains clean and clear thanks to the sandy substrate. And when it’s not awash in lush sand, it’s gravelly. Even upstream of the former dam, where I expected century-old sediment to run amok (amuck?), the bottoms are all sandy or sand-gravel without a hint of mud except for a mile or so behind the dam. But even there, it’s clustered, not ubiquitous.
The boulders on this trip (aka “glacial erratics”) are not as bodacious as found elsewhere on the river both upstream and down-, but they’re impressive nevertheless (and knock the sox off rivers down here in south-central Wisconsin). They come in posses and are interspersed throughout the trip from beginning, middle, to end.
The last couple miles below the dam are the most wooded in this trip and offer fleeting moments of classic Central Wisconsin, that inimitable combination of woods, ridges, erratics, and light rapids.
Finally – and I want to tread respectfully here, lest I be accused of disaster tourism – there was the whole point of this trip in the first place: to witness personally what a river looks like one year after it had been liberated from century-old shackles. This was a rare opportunity – I hope not once in a lifetime – something totally unprecedented for me.
What we didn’t like:
Despite the newly free-flowing nature of the Little Wolf loping through Manawa now, there are stretches up- and downstream of the dam where the river is slow, long, and straight. Added to that plateaued appeal was the generally low water level on our October paddle. Worth the cost of admission? Sure thing. But worthy of rating this trip four stars? Not so much.
The other consideration is there are next to no trees in the ~4 miles upstream of the dam, and no trees means no shade (among other things). This is not surprising since the area was a marsh-like millpond for the last century. Presuming that a new dam does not replace the busted one (see below), then the surrounding environs will adapt. Together with volunteers armed with seeds and thoughtful intention, an old wound will naturally heal. In the meantime, be prepared for a whole lot of wide open sky – and be sure to have a hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen.
If we did this trip again:
First, I’d like to do this trip again about five years from now, to see how much the landscape has recovered and the ecology reverted (“riverted”?) to its natural state. To be blunt, if the dam is rebuilt, then I wouldn’t do this trip again; there’d be no reason why any paddler would want to – what, to attend a funeral in a canoe? I understand that area residents might enjoy kayaking a fake lake for an hour, or to fish, but returning the landscape to its plastic surgery implants will appeal to no one outside of town, especially since Waupaca County is already dotted with so many lakes and ponds to begin with, many of which are natural.
Assuming the river remains free-flowing, there are a couple of practical considerations to apply in the future. One, paddle this early in the morning or late in the afternoon so that the southern sun is not blinding the entire time. Two, you’d do well to paddle this with more water. How much more? That’s hard to answer now that the USGS gauge is decommissioned. We had enough water to scrape through in the shallows, but another inch or two would have eased things. The best determination is eyeballing the riffles at the Symco bridge: if those are unrunnable without walking, you can expect to get of your boat at various times downstream as well.
Finally, please consider supporting a local business with your patronage. I don’t know how much revenue Manawa has lost since the millpond drained, whether boating in summer or ice-fishing in winter, but I’m sure it’s measurable. Paddlers can help offset this in thoughtful ways.
Just Give Me the Damn Facts!
Whether one sees the breached dam as a lamentable tragedy or a karmic triumph is bound to be predetermined by one’s own bias. It may not be within the purview of a paddling website to weigh in on such matters, but I’d like to offer some indisputable data to put the big picture in context.
- Around 1915, an earlier log-driving dam was replaced to mill flour. In 1929, that mill would be superseded to generate electricity. This is the dam we know today (though it has undergone significant repairs in the last 95 years).
- On July 5, 2024, the City of Manawa measured approximately 5.7 inches of rain in a four-hour period – after approximately 6” of rain had fallen already over the previous two weeks. The dam breached at its weakest point and a 50′-wide section washed out. In turn, the millpond drained, and the Little Wolf was a free-flowing river again since the late 19th
- The former millpond was 180 acres large with a shoreline of 5 miles and an average depth of 6′. A total of 53 households had lakeshore property – 18 in the City of Manawa, 35 in the Town of Little Wolf.
- The combined population of Manawa and Little Wolf is 2,845 as of 2020. Both municipalities are expected to have fewer residents by the next 15 years.
- The dam is not repairable, on account of its many structural compromises. To remove the dam outright is a one-time cost estimated to be about $700,000. Replacing it would be 12 times more expensive, to the tune of $8.4 million, minimally (especially in light of tariffs and lawsuits), to say nothing of ongoing future costs in upkeep and repairs.
- If the dam is replaced, it is very unlikely that it would be hydroelectric, as the risk/liability of such an investment for the City of Manawa to take over would exceed its negligible rate of return.
Needless to say, this is just human monetization. The hidden fees and overall cost to the ecology is incalculable.
If you’re interested in learning more about this, or can’t fall back asleep at 3 am, then dive into this thorough analysis about the history and potential future of the Manawa dam here. If you’d prefer the summarized version, see here. The analysis was conducted by Cedar Corporation, in Manawa, and decidedly in favor of building a new dam. That said, they provide some cool photos and maps.
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Related Information:
Little Wolf River I: Manawa to County Road X
Little Wolf River II: Ness Road to Big Falls
Little Wolf River III: Big Falls to Highway 110
Good People: Friends of the Little Wolf River
Video: Driftless Kayaker
Video: Drone footage of former millpond
Wikipedia: Little Wolf River
Miles Paddled/Driftless Kayaker Video:
Photo Gallery:
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