Beyond Beer and Back

These are strange times for small breweries. A generational shift in drinking habits has led to beer consumption levels hitting a 25-year low. For craft brewers, the downward trend has been evident since 2019. The three Oshkosh breweries – Bare Bones, Fifth Ward, and Fox River – were more resilient. But that’s no longer the case. Through the first seven months of 2024, overall beer production in Oshkosh is down almost eight percent. It’s the first non-COVID-related production dip in more than a decade.

The gloomy outlook has brewers searching for novel ways to retain consumer interest. At Fox River Brewing Company, the approach has been to introduce a line of beverages that have little to do with what the brewery has long been known for. In the parlance of marketers, Fox River has gone “Beyond Beer.” Or as Fox River Brewmaster Drew Roth puts it “Beverages that aren't beer in any way, shape, or form.”

This year, Fox River has introduced a range of new products that have nothing to do with barley malt and hops. The brewery has released a line of craft sodas, hard tea, hard lemonade, and continued its line of hard seltzers. “The decision was made late last year to try these periphery beverages out and see if any of them made sense for us,” says Roth. “We were looking at the trends. It made sense to at least take a look at it.”

Oddly enough, the strategy may have actually helped beer sales. Fox River’s Oshkosh facility is the only brewery in Oshkosh that has seen its beer production increase this year; by a modest three percent. Roth will take that as a win for now. “It’s a cyclical thing,” he says. “These trends come and go. It’s like the thing with ready to drink cocktails. They pop up every five or ten years and become trendy, and then cycle back out. I mean, craft beer has been around long enough now that people don’t see it as something new anymore, which is fine.”

Fox River Brewmaster Drew Roth.

If craft beer has crossed over from the fashionable to the familiar, then Fox River is one of the better Wisconsin examples of how that looks on the ground. Next year, the brewery will celebrate its 30th Anniversary. Of the 21 breweries that have operated in Oshkosh since 1849, Fox River is now fourth in terms of longevity. The only breweries here that have survived longer were the venerable Rahr Brewing (91 years), Oshkosh Brewing Company (77 years), and Peoples Brewing (59 years).

This month, Fox River is releasing two beers connected to that legacy. The first is 175 Bock, a lager made in recognition of this year’s 175th anniversary of the beginning of commercial brewing in Oshkosh. The beer, which will be available on draft and in a special commemorative can, pays tribute to the Bock beers that were wildly popular in Oshkosh for over a century.

 “This is an older style of American lager,” Roth says. “It’s based on a pre-Prohibition type of beer. We used American malts and a little corn, like they did in those older recipes. We also used locally-grown hops from Hidden Valley Hops Farm in Winchester.” The blend includes hops cultured from rootstock dating back to the 1840s discovered at the site of one of Winnebago County’s first hop farms in Allenville. “I’m looking forward to getting this packaged,” Roth says, “the flavors are really nice.”

And then there’s a beer with a mouthful of a name: Gambrinus was a Real SOB. The beer came onto Roth’s radar when he judged at a homebrew competition held by the Society of Oshkosh Brewers. “It was by far the best beer in the competition,” Roth says. “It’s a dark lager, a style of beer we like brewing this time of year.” The competition beer was made by Society of Oshkosh Brewers’ member Scott Westpfahl. The recipe is from the late 1800s when the Gambrinus Brewery on Harney Avenue used it to make its Kulmbacher Bier. Roth scaled up that same recipe for his “Gambrinus” beer. “We like working with the SOBs,” Roth says. “They represent a really passionate chunk of the craft beer consumer in this city.”

Fox River Lead Brewer Patrick McHugh (left) and Scott Westpfahl of the Society of Oshkosh Brewers on the brew deck at Fox River making "Gambrinus."

The contrasting strains of traditional and trendy make for a complex juggling act for Roth, who is into his sixth year as brewmaster at Fox River. He oversees brewing operations at the Fox River brew houses in Oshkosh and Appleton and directs a crew of six other brewers. “It’s been a challenging year for sure, but I‘m more settled in than anything else, so we’ve been able to handle it,” Roth says. “That said, I’m hoping this coming year will be a little less hectic. We’re streamlining things and getting more targeted. But there’s always going to be something new to contend with. It’s just the nature of the business.”

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William Leard’s Garden of Evil

Here’s an old part of town with some history that’s gone missing…

The southeast corner of Washington and Rosalia.

That corner is part of the Washington Avenue Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The neighborhood doesn't exactly scream saloon or beer history. It did have its moment, though. There once was a gaudy, two-acre beer garden at this spot. It was the folly of a guy named Leard.

William Leard was 25 when he came to Oshkosh in 1875 from Oconomowoc. The former farm boy remade himself here. The new William Leard was a haberdasher, dealing in fancy clothes for men. It was a fitting turn. He liked flashy things.

Leard was a hustler with a talent for getting people to loan him money. He started doing business from a small shop on Main Street near the river. In 1879, he upgraded to an elaborate, double-front store up the block. Leard put a steam engine in the basement and a dozen steam-powered sewing machines on the second floor. He had a crew of seamstresses making his own line of clothes. Leard claimed to be the first steam-powered tailor in Wisconsin. He could turn out a custom-made suit in eight hours.

William Leard’s clothing store and factory near the southwest corner of N. Main and High, circa 1887.

Leard was a relentless self-promoter. He would parade around Main Street with a rack of his clothes yelling about his cheap prices. He’d hand out gaudy trinkets to remember him by. He’d have fake bankruptcy sales and run click-bait newspaper ads that grabbed your eyes and then changed the subject.

1881

Leard’s park may have been his first overtly crooked scheme. In the summer of 1883, Leard announced that he had purchased land at the southeast corner of Washington and Rosalia streets. This was his first lie. Leard hadn’t bought anything. The land was owned by a Chicago couple named George and Mary Harmon. It’s unclear if Leard even had a legitimate lease on the property. No matter, he immediately put his own stamp on it.

Leard had a fixation with the lucky horseshoe symbol. It was his trademark and became the park’s motif. A driveway, big enough for buggy rides, looped through the park in the shape of a horseshoe with entrances on Rosalia and Washington. At the corner was a horseshoe gate leading onto a winding walking path that passed by horseshoe-shaped flower beds. A fenced deer park was planned for the back of the property. The grounds were lit by Chinese lanterns bathing the place with an ethereal glow. And in the middle of it all was a bandstand next to some sort of residence. Leard wasn’t saying what the residence was for. He knew better.

A recent aerial view of the land that comprised Leard’s park.

Leard’s park was anything but pastoral. The drive and walking paths were littered with signs advertising his clothing. Admission was free if you didn’t consider the cost of being subjected to all the promotional trash. Leard must have realized that one visit would be enough for most folks. His plan for getting them to come back centered around the peculiar residence at the center of the grounds. It wasn’t a residence. It turned out to be a pavilion surrounded by a beer garden.

The park opened on the evening of August 8, 1883. The Arion Band mounted the stand and began blowing. And then the beer was flowing. This was not what people were expecting. The neighbors lost their shit. Or, as the Daily Northwestern more politely put it, “The neighborhood is much agitated and incensed over the erection of a saloon and garden in that locality.”

Did Leard really think he’d get away with this? With no forewarning, he’d plopped a beer garden into a posh, politically connected neighborhood. He hadn’t even bothered to get a liquor license. His lark was short-lived.

It all came tumbling down a month later when Leard finally applied for a liquor permit. The application was immediately denied by the Common Council. One alderman objected to the rejection, saying that the council never had a problem handing out liquor licenses to dealers in his neighborhood. His name was Larrabee, and he lived on the other side of the river in the blue-collar Fifth Ward. His objections were ignored. Leard’s Beer Garden was kaput.

His problems were only beginning. Leard had been living large, and largely on credit. The bills were coming due. All of a sudden, his old friends were suing him. In early 1886, Leard’s assets were seized and sold off to pay his debts. He then suckered one of his creditors into giving him another shot. Leard was back in business by the end of 1886. But his shop failed again a few months later.

Leard had a side grift keeping him afloat while his other bridges burned. He was in cahoots with a wandering Norwegian cigar maker called Dr. F.B. Hyland. The Doctor was no doctor. Hyland was a charismatic quack claiming to be a human battery who could heal people by rubbing them with his “magnetized” hands. The ruse was even weirder than it sounds. In addition to the groping, Hyland used his dynamic hands to magnetize sheets of newspaper. He instructed his patients to wear the magic newspaper over their affliction. And they did. As if cheating them out of their money wasn’t humiliation enough.

An 1885 ad for F.B. Hyland. The address reflects the old house numbering system in Oshkosh.

Between 1885 and 1889, Dr. Hyland ducked in and out of Oshkosh performing his mysterious rituals. His base of operation was Leard's home on Waugoo Avenue. Eventually, people got wise to the scam. Leard ended up losing the property to foreclosure. You can still see part of that place. The Konrad-Behlman Funeral Home is built around it.

Leard’s former home at 402 Waugoo Avenue.

In 1888, Leard found a new victim: his widowed mother. She had sold off the family farm some years earlier and was apparently sitting on a plump nest egg. She loaned her shady son money to set up a new clothing shop on Washington Avenue just east of Main. His new store was another flop. It closed the following year.

His undoing was now finalized. Leard left town. He went to Superior and opened another shop. His wife didn't go with him. Maggie Leard remained in Oshkosh with their three children. It was a wise decision.

Leard hatched his next financial mess in Superior. He was soon being menaced again by folks he had burned. They were less forgiving up north. At the behest of one of his creditors, Leard was charged with larceny and arrested. He jumped bail and went on the run. They tracked him down in Barnum, Minnesota, about 40 miles away, in late February 1891. Leard was dragged back to Superior and thrown in jail.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, March 3, 1891.

That was the last straw for Maggie Leard. She took the three kids and moved to Milwaukee. She got an apartment on the east side. She told people her husband was dead. Not quite.

After a short stint in the pen, Leard moved to Ironwood, Michigan and found a job in a tailoring shop. That’s where the clock ran out on him. In the summer of 1893, Leard caught typhoid fever and died. He was 43-years old.

Despite the fiasco of his time in Oshkosh, Leard maintained a fondness for the old town where he screwed so many people over. He asked that his remains be brought back to Oshkosh for burial. His final wish might not have been fulfilled. He didn’t have many friends left. I haven’t been able to find his grave nor any mention of his funeral or burial.

A faint memory of him flickered some 40 years later. In 1935, the Winnebago County Archaeological and Historical Society hosted a discussion of “old settlers” to share their memories of bygone Oshkosh. That evening, a Mr. Scott spoke of a “forgotten” park at the corner of Washington and Rosalia. He said it was run by William Leard. Nobody else seemed to remember it. As far as I can tell, that’s the last time Leard's park was mentioned until now.

Today, there are 15 homes on the 2.3-acre plot of land formerly known as Leard’s Beer Garden. How many of his horseshoe trinkets have been dug up in backyard gardens there over the years? I can only imagine them being tossed aside. Another odd knickknack lurking in the dirt.

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