Wisconsin 101

Read more about the article Pleasant Ridge: Southwest Wisconsin’s Integrated Pioneer Community

Schoolhouse of District #5 in Pleasant Ridge. Both Blacks and whites built, attended, and taught at the school, circa 1890. Image ID: 4239, WI Historical Society.

Pleasant Ridge: Southwest Wisconsin’s Integrated Pioneer Community

Pleasant Ridge was a rural agricultural community located near present-day Beetown in central Grant County that was founded in 1850 by formerly enslaved African Americans. Pleasant Ridge is unique in that it was one of the first fully racially integrated communities in…

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December 21, 2022

Read more about the article Frank Lloyd Wright’s Organic Architecture

Delonge Studio, Portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright, c. 1930. Courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Image ID 26555.

Art & Design / Art, Sport & Entertainment / Home Furnishings / Iowa County / Related Stories / Everyday Life / Nature & Environment / 1900-1918 / 1918-1945 / Region 6 - South West / Frank Lloyd Wright Pew/Bench

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Organic Architecture

Born in 1867 in Richland City, WI, Frank Lloyd Wright designed nearly 150 buildings in Wisconsin alone, as well as numerous homes and churches across the United States. Wright’s philosophy of matching an architectural structure to its natural environment, along with his…

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August 19, 2021

Slavery in Wisconsin

Industry / Grant County / Ethnicity & Identity / Iowa County / Platteville / Related Stories / 1787-1848 / Pleasant Ridge / 1848-1877 / Manufacturing & Trade / Society & Religion / Region 6 - South West / James D. Williams' Windlass

Slavery in Wisconsin

It may come as a surprise to learn that during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries slavery existed in the region that would become the state of Wisconsin. Over this period, thousands of enslaved African Americans or enslaved American Indians lived and…

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September 11, 2018

Mining Industry / Industry / Grant County / Object Histories / Iowa County / Lafayette County / 1787-1848 / Manufacturing & Trade / Nature & Environment / Region 6 - South West

OBJECT HISTORY: Galena

Galena, the official state mineral of Wisconsin, is the raw material used to produce lead. During the Wisconsin “lead rush” of the 1820s-40s, lead was more valuable than gold. That is because just about everybody, rich or poor, used objects made of lead in their daily lives – products that ranged from plumbing to toothpaste!…

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December 9, 2017