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WCWCW Feature of the Week
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Old World Wisconsin
*Note* the Old World Wisconsin Website has MOVED! to HERE. None of the old hyperlinks on this page to the "old" Old World Wisconsin Website are likely to work.
Visitors to the crossroads village greet a couple arriving aboard a horse and carriage.
The Living History in the Heartlands-The westward migration of pioneers swept across the Midwest like a tidal wave in the nineteenth century. Click here to read more about it at the Old World Wisconsin Website.
Old World Wisconsin is located at S103 W37890 Highway 67, Eagle, WI 53119, 262/594-6300. Click here for visitor information. Located 1-1/2 miles south of Eagle in Waukesha County, just off Hwy. 67. Eagle is 35 miles from Milwaukee; from Madison, 55 miles; from Chicago, 75 miles. E-mail: owwvisit@idcnet.com.
Thatched roofs on the outbuildings of the Schulz Farm, in the German-Polish area, which once stood in Dodge County, derive from European architectural traditions. (WCWCW Image)
Old World Wisconsin’s historic farm and village buildings began as Wisconsin’s way of celebrating America's bicentennial. The museum, the largest of its kind in the world dedicated to the history of rural life, opened in 1976 to commemorate 200 years of American history. But the museum’s story begins long before then.
Old World Wisconsin's Stage Coach Inn. The stage coaches were so tall in these days that passengers luggage could be thrown to the top balcony! (WCWCW Image)
To make it happen, researchers traveled the state – from Lake Superior to the Illinois border, and from the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan – in search of authentic historic buildings hewn by generations of Wisconsin settlers. Historians not only documented the farmhouses, outbuildings, and small-town structures that still stood, they also researched the lives of the people who built them, worked in them, and lived in them. Piece by piece, workers painstakingly dismantled these fading old relics, numbered bricks, boards and logs, and moved them to Old World Wisconsin. There, in a setting largely unchanged from the rolling prairies the first pioneers found, the buildings took shape once more.
A farmer demonstrates the use of a cream seperator.
Today, the museum has grown to include more than sixty historic structures, from ethnic farmsteads that include furnished houses and rural outbuildings to a crossroads village with its traditional small-town institutions. Old World Wisconsin continues to grow. Recent additions include the Pleasant Ridge settlement, composed of some of the few remaining structures in Wisconsin built by African-American pioneers.
A group of youngsters celebrate the opening of the Pleasant Ridge exhibit on September 28, 1998.
(From above) Tucked away in the rolling hills of southwestern Wisconsin's Grant County, the settlement of Pleasant Ridge began attracting African-American settlers in 1850. During and following the Civil War, more families – many of them freed or escaped slaves – made their way out of the South and into the Pleasant Ridge settlement. Read more about it here!
The Kortesmaa Barn, built in 1910, housed dairy cattle and is now part of the Finnish Ketola Farm.
Old World Wisconsin 2001 Special Events
Visit Old World Wisconsin!
Our greatful appreciation to the Old World Wisconsin Website and the Wisconsin Historical Society for the use of the pictures and text (except for those marked WCWCW Images). All pictures and text are copyright of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
*Note* the Old World Wisconsin Website has MOVED! to HERE. None of the old hyperlinks on this page to the "old" Old World Wisconsin Website are likely to work.
