Wisconsin 101

Janesville General Motors Assembly Plant

The Janesville Assembly Plant’s near ninety-year run helped define both the city and its workers and the General Motors Company as one of the most successful automakers in the world. The history of the plant is deeply rooted in Janesville’s agricultural past.…

0 Comments

February 17, 2025

Broad History / Indigenous Wisconsin / Ricing Sticks / Odanah / Agriculture / Lac du Flambeau / Ashland County / Food & Cooking / Ethnicity & Identity / Related Stories / Region 1 - North West / Nature & Environment / Region 2 - North East / Vilas County

Wild Rice and Wetland Conservation

Wild rice grows only in the Great Lakes Region in shallow and calm waters. It requires specific conditions, nutrient-rich muddy soil and stable water levels, in order to properly grow to maturity, to produce the seeds able to be harvested. Damaging the…

Comments Off

November 17, 2024

Agriculture / Indigenous Wisconsin / Broad History / Ricing Sticks / Odanah / Lac du Flambeau / Ashland County / Food & Cooking / Related Stories / Ethnicity & Identity / Region 1 - North West / Nature & Environment / Region 2 - North East / Vilas County

Ricing (Manoominikewin)

Wild rice was depicted in an Ojibwe prophecy before there was even a name for the grain. When the Ojibwe people began to migrate west, they were prophesied to settle where food grows on water. The westward migration was in part because…

Comments Off

November 16, 2024

John Potter's Monster Knife / Milwaukee / Milwaukee County / Related Stories / Ethnicity & Identity / 1848-1877 / Politics & Government / Region 8 - South East

Ezekiel Gillespie, Black Suffrage, and the Wisconsin Idea

The Wisconsin Idea can be a lofty political goal, and it’s one that the state it is named after hasn’t always lived up to. Like so many other places in the United States, Wisconsin has a history of discriminating against its citizens…

Comments Off

October 30, 2024

John Potter's Monster Knife / Madison / Dane County / Related Stories / 1848-1877 / 1877-1900 / Politics & Government / 1900-1918 / Society & Religion / Region 7 - South Center

The Development of Progressive Politics in Wisconsin from Abolition into the Twentieth Century

The legacy of abolitionists and anti-slavery figures didn’t end with the Civil War or the abolition of slavery, indeed many of the political and moral sentiments that fueled this movement for freedom continued on and inspired other political movements in Wisconsin, particularly…

Comments Off

October 30, 2024

Hawks Inn / Delafield / Related Stories / 1787-1848 / 1848-1877 / Waukesha County / Politics & Government / Transportation & Tourism / Region 8 - South East

Nelson Hawks and Delafield’s Beginnings

When Nelson P. Hawks first arrived in the area that is now Delafield, there were no hotels, no mills, churches, or stores of any kind—only a few cabins and the pioneers that occupied them. This would greatly change in the twenty-three years…

0 Comments

September 25, 2024