If you have driven along North Shore Lane this summer and wondered why there is suddenly a barge, a cluster of dewatering bags, and a small forest of orange buoys sitting where the water used to look normal, you are not imagining things. Since mid June, crews from Schafer's Marine Services have been pulling sediment off the bottom of Lake Onalaska near Schaefer's Landing, and the project is further along than almost anyone expected when it started.
According to a WXOW report from late August, the roughly $300,000 North Shore dredging project is running ahead of schedule and is expected to wrap by the end of September. Crews still have about 1,500 yards of material left to clear, most of it in a channel planned to run eight feet deep and twenty feet wide, ending near Mosey's Landing. Once that last stretch is open, the lake will have its first fully renewed deepwater channel in roughly 40 years.
That timing matters more than it looks. This is the same lake that turns into one of the region's biggest wildlife draws every November, when tundra swans stage here by the thousands on their way south. The work happening under the water right now is not cosmetic. It is the reason the spectacle keeps happening at all.
Why the Lake Needed This
Lake Onalaska has been quietly filling in for decades. Sediment settles, water gets shallower, and the deep pockets fish need to survive winter disappear a little more each year. Marc Schultz, chairman of the Lake Onalaska Protection and Rehabilitation District, put it plainly when crews broke ground this summer: the limiting factor for fish in Lake Onalaska is overwintering habitat, and that habitat has been eroding for decades as sediment fills in the lake's deeper pockets, according to the Lake Onalaska Rehabilitation Coalition's account of the project.
The stakes go beyond fishing. Jeff Fimreite, a Lake Onalaska Rehabilitation Coalition board member, told WXOW that the lake and the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge it sits inside generate an estimated $307 million a year for the local economy through birdwatching, boating, paddling, hunting, and fishing. Fimreite has also pointed back to an earlier round of dredging completed in 1964 as proof that this kind of investment keeps paying off for generations, long after the crews and barges move on. Let a lake like this keep silting in, and you are not just losing a fishing spot. You are losing a piece of the region's economy along with it.
Fimreite was even more blunt about the alternative in a WEAU interview published in late August.
If we let it go, that sediment is essentially going to be turning this lake into a great big marsh.
That is not a hypothetical. It is what has already been happening, one inch of sediment at a time, since the last time anyone dredged this lake.
What This Fall Actually Looks Like on the Water
The project removes about 18,500 cubic yards of accumulated mud and debris, all of it pumped through a pipeline to land near North Shore Lane, where dewatering bags separate the sediment from the water before the filtered water goes back into the lake. Crews hit clay, gravel, and buried debris early on, which slowed things down, but the coalition still expects to finish ahead of the original timeline.
Once it does, residents who fish, boat, or paddle this stretch of the lake should notice two things right away. Navigation through Sommers Chute gets easier, with new buoys marking the channel. And the deeper water gives fish a place to survive the winter that has not existed here in decades, addressing the exact bottleneck Schultz described.
The coalition has raised about $270,000 toward the work through county support, fundraising, and private donations, and said earlier this summer it was still about $30,000 short of its goal for this phase. If you want to see where that money went, or where the next phase is headed, the Lake Onalaska Rehabilitation Coalition keeps a running list of project sites from Red Pines to Dresbach.
Right on Time for the Swans
Here is where the timing gets interesting. Lake Onalaska sits on the Mississippi Flyway, and every November it becomes a staging ground for one of the more striking wildlife events in the upper Midwest. According to the Friends of Pool 7 & 8, the nonprofit that runs the refuge visitor center on County Road Z in Brice Prairie, typically 10,000 tundra swans pass through the area during the first three weeks of November, resting and feeding before continuing south.
None of that spectacle depends on a single dredging project finishing on schedule. But the same forces that make the lake worth saving for fish, deep water, healthy sediment, functioning habitat, are the forces that keep it worth showing up for every fall. A lake quietly turning into a marsh eventually stops being a flyway stop at all. Watching this year's dredging wrap up right before the swans arrive is a good reminder that the two are more connected than they look from the shoreline.
The refuge visitor center typically staffs a ranger or naturalist on the first three Saturdays of the season for anyone who wants a closer look at what is actually out there, and the North Shore Lane construction zone itself will be visible from the Red Pines area for anyone curious what all the barge activity has actually accomplished.
The Rest of Brice Prairie's Fall
None of this requires binoculars or a boat to enjoy. A short list of what is already open or opening on Brice Prairie this season:
- Pickle Ranch Pumpkins, a family-owned pumpkin farm on Brice Prairie, stocks pumpkins, gourds, decorative corn, squash, and mums through the fall.
- Rainbow Ridge Farms, tucked into an Onalaska coulee on Hauser Road, runs its farm stay and pumpkin patch alongside goats, chickens, and the kind of hands-on farm experience that has kept it running since 1996.
- The Great River State Trail, which threads through Brice Prairie along the lake, is one of the better fall color rides in the area, connecting toward the Mississippi River bottoms without ever losing sight of the water.
- Coulee Golf Bowl on Green Coulee Road stays open through November for a round of nine and a burger afterward, a solid way to close out a day spent near the lake.
Here is how the season lines up if you are mapping it out:
| Fall Marker | Approximate Window | What To Watch For |
|---|---|---|
| Dredging wrap-up | Now through late September 2026 | Barges and buoys near North Shore Lane and Sommers Chute clear out |
| Pumpkin season | Mid-September through October | Pickle Ranch Pumpkins and Rainbow Ridge Farms open on Brice Prairie |
| Tundra swan migration | First three weeks of November | Up to 10,000 swans stage on the lake, best viewed from County Road Z |
A Lake Worth Paying Attention To
Most years, the fall calendar here is just the swans and the pumpkin patches, the same rhythm repeating itself. This year has an extra layer worth noticing. The barges and buoys that have been part of the drive along North Shore Lane all summer are not a nuisance to wait out. They are the same kind of stewardship that built the lake's habitat back in the late 1980s, done again now because sediment does not wait for anyone to get around to it.
If you have spent any part of the summer wondering what all that equipment near Schaefer's Landing was actually for, now you know. And if watching a decades-overdue restoration project finish right as ten thousand swans show up makes you think a little differently about what it means to live along this water, that is worth sitting with too.
For anyone who has been curious what it actually takes to live along Lake Onalaska, from waterfront access to what a home near the trail system looks like day to day, our guide to buying near Lake Onalaska and our closer look at everyday life along the bike paths and lake both dig into what makes this part of Onalaska work the way it does.
If this fall on the lake has you thinking about what a move here could actually look like, Julie Delap knows this stretch of the Driftless Region well enough to help you figure it out. Schedule a consultation whenever you are ready to talk through it.
