THE STORY: Wisconsin has a rich history of immigration. It’s evident from our town names to our foods to our festivals. The majority of Wisconsin’s ethnic heritage can be traced back to the nineteenth century and the mass immigration of Europeans. In the years leading up to Wisconsin’s statehood, thousands and thousands of Europeans started […]
THE STORY: The 1960s was a decade full of anti-war protests, demonstrations and social unrest. At the forefront of it all was the UW-Madison campus. The UW-Madison campus gained a reputation as one of the nation’s most radical campuses in the 60s. Madison was filled with teach-ins, sit-ins, marches, boycotts, strikes, rallies, and protests. Many […]
THE STORY: Below the beautiful Blue Mounds of Southern Wisconsin lies Wisconsin’s buried treasure, the “jewel box” of American caves, Cave of the Mounds. This area of Wisconsin was settled by Ebenezer Brigham in 1828, Dane County’s first permanent white settler. He had a long storied life (was a miner, ran a trading post and […]
THE STORY: Wisconsin has always known how to put on a show. The Ringling Brothers (Darlington) and P.T. Barnum (Delavan) both started their world famous circus careers in the Dairy State. In 1875, P.T. Barnum helped establish a traveling circus in Delavan, Wisconsin. After merging with James Bailey in 1881, the “Barnum & Bailey Circus” […]
THE STORY: Years before the Brewers were Wisconsin’s baseball team, the Braves called Milwaukee home. They moved from Boston to Milwaukee in 1953 and instantly broke all attendance records. They were Wisconsin’s pride and joy. The Braves were one of the premier teams of the 1950s. They won two National League Pennants, and a World […]
THE STORY: Wisconsin’s dairy tradition dates back to the early 1800s. For years, Wisconsin was the top wheat producing state in America and it took a toll on the land’s soil. Farmers were forced to try new things and that’s when dairy farms started to takeover. By 1899, over ninety percent of Wisconsin farms were […]
THE STORY: Wisconsin has bred its fair share of star athletes over the years. This great state fostered Baseball Hall of Famers Al Simmons, Kid Nichols, Addie Joss, and Burleigh Grimes. Wisconsin natives Elroy Hirsch, Tuffy Leemans, Blood McNally, and Bud Grant tackled their way to the Football Hall of Fame. University of Wisconsin-Madison standouts […]
THE STORY: The last major glacier movement in North America during the Ice Age was known as the Wisconsin Glacial Episode, or Wisconsin Glaciation. It was during this time that most of the early humans and prehistoric animals arrived in North America, via the Bering Strait land bridge. The first known inhabitants of what is […]
THE STORY: The late 1800s gave birth to three of the most famous people to ever come from Wisconsin—artist Georgia O’Keeffe, author Laura Ingalls Wilder, and the most influential architect in American history, Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was born in Richland Center in 1867. He attended high school in Madison, and studied civil engineering briefly […]
THE STORY: In 1856, the first Kindergarten in America was started by Margarethe Schurz in her Watertown, WI home. She originally started it for her young daughter and four of her daughter’s cousins. When more kids were interested in joining, Mrs. Schurz moved her class into a building all their own. As a teenager, while […]
THE STORY: On June 10, 1919, Wisconsin became the first state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the legislature that would give women the right to vote. Illinois actually approved the amendment before Wisconsin, but a misprint in their paperwork required them to resubmit, so Wisconsin came in first! Ha! Wisconsin suffragists, […]
THE STORY: In 1673, Louis Jolliet (a French-Canadian fur trader/explorer) and Jacques Marquette (a French Jesuit Missionary/explorer) set out to find the river that the natives called “Messipi” (The Great Water). Finding a route from the Great Lakes to this mighty river could’ve opened a possible route from the St. Lawrence Seaway all the way […]
