Wisconsin 101 is proud to collaborate with Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Life, an award-winning radio show that celebrates what makes Wisconsin unique. Every few weeks, Wisconsin Life will feature a new object from the Wisconsin 101 collection. Enjoy those radio segments below, ordered by most recent air date.
Jolly Good
by Rachael Vasquez
What would a Southeastern Wisconsinite grab on a hot summer day in the 1970s and 80s? Jolly Good soda of course! This local brand was celebrated as the cornerstone of cookouts, family reunions, and get-togethers.
Miners from Cornwall, England flocked to Wisconsin in the 1800s. They settled in places like Mineral Point and Miner’s Grove as more lead was needed for things like paint, pipes, and lead shot. Cornish miners brought their mining expertise for extracting galena, which is a mineral used to make lead. They also brought a piece of their European culture — the pasty.
Bookmobiles have long dotted Wisconsin’s roadways and parking lots. The state has a long history of bringing books and movies to people living anywhere from Wisconsin Dells to Green Bay. The Door County Bookmobile provided books to rural residents of Door County starting in the 1950s. Today, that tradition is carried on by bookmobiles like the Madison Public Library’s Dream Bus.
They don’t call Wisconsin “America’s Dairyland” for nothing. The Babcock ice cream carton symbolizes both Wisconsin’s dairy farming past and its appeal as a summer destination for tourists from around the world.
In the 1890s, everyone from Annie Oakley to the Badger Wheelmen participated in Wisconsin’s cycling craze. The blue drop-tube safety bicycle represents two sides of Wisconsin’s bicycling story: bike manufacturing and recreational uses.
Founded in Wausau, WI, in 1911, America’s first workers compensation insurance company started using equipment like the Employers Mutual Audiometer to develop new standards of workplace safety.
A penguin-themed serving bowl dishes out stories about the aluminum industry, postwar consumer culture, and home entertainment in mid-twentieth century Wisconsin.
Memories of European immigration, the Depression, and the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps are woven into the fabric of this commemorative pillow sham.
The Babcock Butterfat Tester, developed at the University of Wisconsin in 1890, transformed the US dairy industry and helped Wisconsin become the Dairy State.
Pop open a bottle from the old Cassel Soda Company and you’ll find surprising stories about Prohibition, Milwaukee’s resort towns, and urbanization in early-1900s Wisconsin.
A tattered music recital poster sings songs of Milwaukee’s late-nineteenth century music scene, the women’s movement, and early Mexican immigration to Wisconsin.
Five brothers from Hamburg, Wisconsin, built a fox-fur empire that transformed the fur industry and played a major role in the development of a canine distemper vaccine.
Hewn from Northwoods maple, this Vulcan Corporation pin reminds us that Milwaukee was once the bowling capital of America. From Wisconsin’s lumbering heyday, to Japan’s abandoned alleys, explore history in the bowling lane.