Bob Koch
The yard and the gardens in addition to the berm.
The proposed new road to the maintenance yard, left, would have crossed the berm that contains cremains.
In 1998, when Cathie Bruner was manager of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve, she got a call from the UW medical school, saying they had “another load” for her. “A load of what?” she asked. The man told her it was the cremated remains of people who had donated their bodies to the school for research and instruction. If families didn’t want the ashes returned to them, the school buried them in the preserve.
When the man showed up at the preserve with a 5-gallon bucket of cremains, they found a spot in a large pile of dirt from the excavation of UW Hospital, dumped just north of Bill’s Woods next to the Campus Maintenance Yard. There the cremains could be buried without disturbing existing plants and trees.
Eventually the UW-Madison grounds department built a large berm that included the dirt pile, says Bruner. The berm separated the maintenance yard, used to hold piles of mulch, scrap concrete, and other materials, from the woods to the south and the Eagle Heights Community Gardens to the north. Over the years more buckets were added to the berm, which was seeded with grass and maintained.
When Bruner heard of the university’s proposal to build a road to the maintenance yard crossing the berm, she knew she had to speak up.
“It’s sort of luck that I’m involved in this,” she says. Bruner submitted comments about the presence of the cremains at a virtual public meeting on July 7, hosted by Ayres Associates, an engineering firm contracted by the university to draft the environmental impact assessment for the project.
Gillian Drummond, director of public affairs for UW-Madison, says the university was unaware that cremains were buried in the preserve, and “has been unable to find documentation confirming [their] specific location.”
The medical school’s body donor program dates to 1903 and has received approximately 8,700 donations, Drummond says in an email to Isthmus. “Cremated remains are either returned to a pre-designated individual identified by the donor or scattered privately on university property away from the main UW-Madison campus.”
Trucks entering the UW maintenance yard currently use a paved road also often used by pedestrians, which connects to the lakeshore bike trail near the entrance of Picnic Point. That road will become pedestrian-only after the construction of the new Frautschi Center, a visitor and education center to be built at the entry to Picnic Point.
Bob Koch
The berm alongside the current path used mostly by pedestrians.
A path used mostly by pedestrians winds by the berm, right.
If constructed, the new road would start at Lake Mendota Drive and run along a pedestrian path on the southern edge of the Eagle Heights gardens, providing vehicle access to the maintenance yard and the preserve. A service road is needed for “operations that may require larger vehicles, such as clearing of downed trees, regrading paths, and servicing pit toilets,” says Lori Wilson, marketing and communications director for UW-Madison’s Facilities Planning and Management, in an email to Isthmus.
Originally the new service road was part of the construction bid for the Frautschi Center. But due to the concerns raised it’s since been separated from the project, allowing construction of the center, which is anticipated to start in late 2026, to move forward. Many of the 40 people who attended the July 7 virtual meeting, which followed the release of a draft environmental impact assessment, spoke against the proposed siting of the road. Opponents expressed concern about the lack of details on species potentially impacted by the road, storm water management, and safety given the preserve’s heavy pedestrian and bicycle traffic.
The Friends of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve are encouraging people to continue to raise concerns about the environmental impacts of adding the road and to advocate for removing the maintenance yard from the preserve, as was called for in a 2023 master plan for the nature preserve.
Wilson says that the university has identified inaccuracies in the draft environmental impact assessment prepared by consultant Ayres. “The first step is to correct the EIA,” she says. Before constructing a new service road the university would do a full environmental impact statement, which would inform the final design, she adds.
Bruner has also reached out to the Wisconsin State Historic Preservation Office about the buried cremains. The office has since established the berm as an uncatalogued burial site, says Taylor Lambrigger, who works with burial sites at the preservation office. With this designation, the site is protected by Wis. Stat. 157.70, the Burial Sites Preservation Law. Any proposed ground disturbing work would need to be submitted to the Wisconsin Historical Society for review.
The university has consulted with the historical society and will continue to work with them, “including completing an archaeological survey as appropriate,” for an environmental impact statement of any development in the preserve, says Drummond.
