Post Office Building (& Future Home of Driftless Books & Music) ~ Commercial Ave., Viola, WI

Hills of Viola, Summer 2005

Flood - early 1900's - Viola

Cowboy 1.0

One of the Landmarks here in Viola is the old Feed Mill. The building (pictured here) suffered the most from the tornado of '05. The second story collapsed onto the first and the building has been condemned. The Building has a great history, and is over 100 years old. The owner is a guy called the Cowboy. He had the building full of antiques and flea market type stuff. It was an amazing place, where you could find anything. It's sad to see the building destroyed, but even more disturbing to see all the amazing merchandise rotting away.
The cowboy has been working single-handedly to deconstruct the building since the tornado and to salvage as much of the merchandise as he can. He had an auction in Richland Center a month ago, and recovered a bit, but many of the beautiful paintings he had hand-matted and framed, sold for near nothing. Nevertheless, the building is coming down, brick by brick and board by board.
I have been working with the Cowboy as much as i can find time for and have learned alot about cleaning brick with a sheetrock hammer. I figure i have cleaned the mortar from over 3000 bricks so far. The bricks are all for sale, and are stacked on a=pallets. Email me if you need bricks.

I understand that the bricks were all made here in viola,and that the brick factory in town was quite well known.


The Cowboy also has an Opera House for sale. (See Picture) More to come....

C. F. Mathews & Son Drug Store, Viola, early 1900's

This building got hit pretty hard during the F2 tornado that hit us our little town 8-18-2005, 4:10 p.m.

Welcome to Driftless Blog

PHOTO: Viola in early 1900's - "Mt. Nebo" - in background

For some good history check this link out:


Welcome to The new Driftless Blog. This blog will report from the small village of Viola, Wisconsin, and the surrounding area.
Please take part in this blog if you have anything to add.

Right now it's cold and the snow is blanketing the village like a creamy froth.

Viola has a population of 667 people, and is located on the banks of the Kickapoo River.

In August of this year, Viola was hit by a series of tornados, which caused incredible damage and woke our sleepy little village up. FEMA came a bit late, and told us that we had cleaned up the damage too quick. They denied us any Emergency help. The Village is still rebuilding.