I hear the Allen Cameron house on the corner of Fifth and Lake is haunted ... and there is an interesting room in the basement, maybe a Prohibition-era hangout?
    Thanks for asking! Haven’t been in the basement, so I can’t speak to it. Still, I’d be a bit surprised about any speakeasy action. All during Prohibition, Charles Kepler owned the house. He ran a well-known dry goods and ladies’ ready-to-wear store. He also worked with the school board.

However, if any house in Eau Claire is haunted, this would be it. In 1907, Allen Cameron died of heat stroke in an upstairs bedroom, and mourners held his funeral in the parlor downstairs (now a bedroom). Rumor has it he’s never left the house, at least in spirit.
How is it haunted? Couple of recent examples. In 2001, four women students often “misplaced” things, saw flashes of light, heard doors open and close, and felt cool drafts pass by. They also got a lot of pizzas they didn’t order (which, to be fair to Cameron, seems more like an ex-boyfriend thing: Not sure that Cameron was a fan of the za). In 2004, tenants again reported frequent misplacings, and one tenant refused to sleep in the former parlor after being shaken awake by her bed. Twice.

Cameron built the house in 1884: cost him $10,000 ($257K today). He’d arrived in River City 16 years earlier, worked a short while as a log scaler, then launched his own lumbering operation. He’d also gained interests in a half-dozen other companies and owned a 200-acre farm (back in the day, that was a big one). House ain’t what it was: aluminum hides the beautiful clapboard siding, and most of the Victorian detailing has been removed.

What is the Chippewa Valley Beverage Company and is it still around?
    You a bottle collector, perchance? I can’t offer too much, except to say it was in Chippewa Falls and now it’s gone. In the very early 30s, the bottler opened at 121 E. Columbia (now the Zion Lutheran Church parking lot). Around 1943, it moved a few blocks north to the corner of High and Willow. Which, much later, was the Salvation Army Thrift Store; now Picket Fence Antiques. Might be the very same building. The Bev Co closed about 1958. So, a 25-year run, roughly.

It had several owners, most from Eau Claire: C.B. Bullis and his son James, Glen Gibson, Allen Starck. CVBC bottled soft drinks for sure, but ever beer? Dunno. Early manager James Bullis was a “brewmaster” by trade, if that means anything.
The whole operation lived very much in the shadow of Chippewa Falls’ way more famous bottlers, Chippewa Springs and Leinenkugel’s. Almost literally in the shadow of Leinie’s a few blocks to the north.

The International Harvester apartment building near Banbury Place -- how did it get its name?
    From International Harvester. In 1910, J.P. Morgan’s company took over the general-office building of the Northwestern Lumber Company, and in 1928 replaced that structure with the brick beauty where urbane Northsiders now reside. Early on, we had a Harvester wholesale farm-equipment division, but I think the later building was devoted entirely to truck parts. U.S. Rubber bought it in 1946. Driving down Putnam Street from the north, the brickwork still shows the ghost of the IH sign in a certain light.

Got a local question? Send it (17 S. Barstow St.) or email it (mail@volumeone.org) and Frank will answer it!  Frank has lived in Eau Claire for most of the past 41 years. He is an editor and researcher at the Chippewa Valley Museum, which is open all year just beyond the Paul Bunyan Camp Museum in beautiful Carson Park. You should go there.