When I was a kid growing up on Vine Street in the 80s, the train tracks that bisected my lower west side neighborhood led straight to Half Moon Beach. Most summer days you could find me and a motley group of friends walking along the tracks, pitching rocks, and snapping each other with oversized beach towels on our way to the lake. While my memory lends it a sort of Stand By Me quality, I’m sure it was probably more mundane than I remember. And unfortunately, even with the magic of nostalgia, I still remember myself as the chubby kid.

The trains were mostly gone by then and the only bridge we had to cross was barely 50 feet across, but still our trips to the beach felt like an adventure. My mom hated me walking the tracks, but it was the fastest way to the beach and growing up on the west side, Half Moon Lake offered the nearest relief from the summer heat.

I hadn’t thought about those summer days at the beach for some time, until a recent story about the cleanup project on Half Moon Lake got me feeling a bit nostalgic. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time on and around Half Moon. While I still canoe and occasionally fish at Half Moon, I hadn’t been to the beach in years. I guess like a lot of people in the Valley, I just kind of gave up on the old oxbow. So on a recent sunny afternoon, I decided to go see what had become of one of my favorite childhood haunts.

Upon my arrival, I noticed the parking lot was still packed, but now mostly by spillover from the lots at Luther Hospital. The beach itself seems smaller now, like the lake itself, half consumed by weeds. The train tracks that offered me easy passage are gone now, too, as is most of what made Half Moon Beach great when I was a kid. No more crowds burning their feet on the hot sand; no more lifeguards perched high on their green wooden towers; no more slippery docks filled with screaming kids. The beach itself is now reminiscent of a ghost town, slowly reverting to its natural state.

    For those of you who remember Half Moon Beach in the 80s, I’m not suggesting Half Moon Beach was an unspoiled paradise. Sure, I got swimmers’ itch more than once and I remember pulling those stringy clumps of algae from my hair. I also remember the lifeguard’s whistle that cleared the water every afternoon, so they could skim the weeds from the water with over-sized volleyball nets. But, for a kid growing up on the lower west side in the 80s, Half Moon Beach was pretty great.

Nowadays, people who don’t remember the old days at Half Moon Beach can’t believe anyone ever swam in the lake, and I can’t say I blame them. The beach looks pretty shabby and the lake itself is almost completely choked by weeds come midsummer. The area is still as beautiful as ever, filled with scenic bluffs and tall pines, but the water itself has become almost impassible to swimmers and paddlers alike. The invasive weeds, Curly Leaf Pondweed, and Eurasian Watermilfoil choke the lake by late spring and then feed the algae blooms when they die of in the summer. In the past, the weeds were managed by a large cutter that looked a bit like a Zamboni slowly puttering around the lake, but the weed problem has gotten too large for cutting alone.

So, this past April, the Wisconsin DNR and the Army Corps of Engineers began a management program to curb the growth of the invasive weed species with the first of three annual herbicide treatments.  The herbicide is meant to kill the invasive species without harming the lake’s natural habitat. The first treatment commenced in late April, and my hopes for the future of the lake are high.

Eau Claire is a city blessed with abundant waterways and, with any luck, Half Moon can once again become a centerpiece in our great city. My walk around Half Moon Beach made me sad that the generations that came after me never knew Half Moon Lake as anything other than the green, smelly, weed filled stew that surrounds Carson Park. Hopefully, in the next few years Half Moon will begin to return to what it once and allow another chubby kid from the west side their own great memories of growing up near Half Moon Beach.