the last ferry driver
Jim Alf, 1954
Until 1964, rural Dunn County drivers depended on a ferry, not a bridge, to cross the Chippewa River. Jim Alf reflects on a boyhood spent at the Caryville Ferry. words by: B.J. Hollars photos courtesy of: Jim Alf
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n a cool summer morning in 1950, 12-year-old Jim Alf woke upstairs in the ferry house beside the Chippewa River. He stirred in his bed, then tiptoed past his snoring brothers and slipped out the back door, his fishing pole in hand. The walk from the Caryville ferry house to the ferry landing wasn’t more than a few hundred feet – far enough to keep the Chippewa River from flooding their home, but not so far that Jim, his parents, and his brothers were inconvenienced by their dozens of daily walks to the landing. In later years, Jim would refer to such early morning moments as his “golden hour” – a photography term for when the light touches softly upon the sky. But for Jim, golden hours were about more than light; they were about silence, too. From the end of the ferry, Jim cast his
line and waited for the fish to strike. On a good morning, he’d catch a mess of small pike long before the first vehicle of the day puttered to
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scent wafting up the stairs. The Alf family would then gather in the ferry house’s modest kitchen, squeezing around the table alongside the stove, the cupboard, and the pitcher pump – the latter being the most technologically advanced feature in their semi-primitive home. Though electricity now buzzed throughout much of Dunn County, the Alfs’ home wouldn’t be wired until later that year. Yet as a boy, Jim was rarely bothered by the lack of modern conveniences. “Though it would have been nice to have indoor plumbing,” he concedes. As for the ferry, which crossed the river about 10 miles west of Eau Claire, it ran by the most advanced technology of the time. A repurposed Model-A Ford engine powered a winch-and-cable system. A cable anchored on both sides of the river wrapped around the winch drum, providing traction. Before engines, the ferry was powered by current alone, though the addition of the engine ensured
Running the Caryville Ferry was stable work, with Dunn County paying Bill’s annual
Jim Alf, today
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| AUGUST 11, 2022
salary of $3,120 (approximately $38,000 in today’s money). That was for working 18 hours a day,
seven days a week.
the ferry landing on the south side of the river. He’d clean the fish, then hand them to his mother who’d fry them on the wood stove and send their