Wisconsin

Paleo-Indians arrived in present-day Wisconsin about 12,000 years ago, during or after the retreat of the last continental glacier. The region’s early inhabitants included the Adena culture, known as the Mound Builders.⁠[1][2]

When European explorers first arrived in the 17th century, the region was home to peoples including the Ojibwa, Menominee, Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) and Potawatomi.⁠[1]

In 1634 the French explorer Jean Nicolet (1598–1642), searching for a Northwest Passage to China, reached the region, the first known European to arrive in Wisconsin.⁠[3][4]

In 1672 France claimed Wisconsin as part of its New World territory. In 1673 Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette traveled the length of the Mississippi River.⁠[3][4]

The first permanent European settlement in the region was founded in 1717.⁠[2]

France controlled the area until 1763, when it ceded the region to Great Britain under the Treaty of Paris after the French and Indian War; that year Wisconsin Indians revolted against British rule.⁠[2][4]

In 1783, after the American Revolution, the second Treaty of Paris made Wisconsin United States territory.⁠[4][1][2]

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 placed Wisconsin in the Northwest Territory (1787–1800); Wisconsin then belonged in turn to Indiana Territory (1800–1809), Illinois Territory (1809–1818) and Michigan Territory (1818–1836).⁠[4][5]

The War of 1812 began in 1812 and ended in 1814, and the British withdrew from Wisconsin in 1815. In 1816 the United States built Fort Howard at Green Bay and Fort Crawford at Prairie du Chien, which remained in use until 1853 and 1856 respectively.⁠[5]

In 1820 Wisconsin’s population was estimated at 1,444. In 1822 the federal government began issuing licenses to mine lead in the southwest; by 1829 more than 4,000 miners around Mineral Point were producing 13 million pounds of lead a year.⁠[5][1]

In August 1825 thousands of Indians gathered at Prairie du Chien, where federal officials negotiated a general peace treaty. Fort Winnebago was built at Portage in 1828.⁠[5]

The Sauk leader Black Hawk considered a treaty negotiated at St. Louis in 1804 invalid. On April 6, 1832, he and about 1,200 people recrossed the Mississippi River to reclaim their homes on the Rock River, beginning the Black Hawk War. On August 1 the surviving Sauk reached the mouth of the Bad Axe River; the next day U.S. forces killed most of the surviving Sauk men, women and children, and of the roughly 1,200 who had crossed in April, about 150 survived.⁠[5][4]

In 1836 Wisconsin’s population passed 10,000, making it eligible for territorial status. On April 20 that year President Andrew Jackson signed the act creating Wisconsin Territory, which covered present-day Wisconsin, IowaIowaIowa is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital and largest city is Des Moines. It was admitted to the Union on December 28, 1846, as the 29th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 3,190,369.Open the full entry and MinnesotaMinnesotaMinnesota is a state in the north-central United States and the most northerly of the 48 contiguous states; its capital is St. Paul and its largest city is Minneapolis. It was admitted to the Union on May 11, 1858, as the 32nd state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,706,494.Open the full entry and parts of the Dakotas; Henry Dodge was appointed territorial governor.⁠[4][5][1]

On October 25, 1836, the first territorial legislature convened at Belmont and chose Madison as the permanent capital, which was then surveyed and platted; construction of the first capitol began in 1837. In 1838 the land west of the MississippiMississippiMississippi is a state of the United States on the Gulf of Mexico; Jackson is both its capital and its largest city. It was admitted to the Union on December 10, 1817, as the 20th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 2,961,279.Open the full entry became part of Iowa Territory, reducing Wisconsin Territory.⁠[5][4][1]

In 1845 Swiss immigrants founded New Glarus. Immigration from northern Europe had begun in the 1830s and grew over the following decades.⁠[4][1]

In 1846 Congress passed the enabling act for statehood, when the population had reached 155,277; that fall the first constitutional convention met in Madison for ten weeks, but voters rejected its proposed constitution in 1847. A second convention drafted a more moderate constitution, which voters accepted in March 1848.⁠[4][5]

On May 29, 1848, President James K. Polk signed the statehood bill. The legislature met on June 5, and Nelson Dewey was inaugurated as the first governor on June 7. The University of Wisconsin was founded the same year.⁠[4]

In 1849 the first telegram reached Milwaukee, and in 1851 the first railroad train ran from Milwaukee to Waukesha. The 1850 census recorded 304,456 residents.⁠[4][4][5]

In the 1850s Wisconsin was a leading center of abolitionism, and enslaved people escaping bondage passed through on the Underground Railroad. In 1854 abolitionists meeting in a Ripon schoolhouse proposed a new party to be called “Republican”; that year the fugitive slave Joshua Glover was arrested in Racine, and the state Supreme Court declared the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 unconstitutional.⁠[1][4]

Also in 1854, the Lake Superior Ojibwe bands ceded the northern forests while retaining hunting and fishing rights. Between 1804 and 1854, more than 70 treaties were negotiated with Wisconsin Indians.⁠[5]

About 96,000 Wisconsin soldiers served in the Civil War, and 12,216 of them died.⁠[4]

By 1880 most of the land suited to farming had been settled. Commercial lumbering reached the northern forests in the 1870s and continued for about 40 years, and iron ore mining began in the north in the 1880s. The northern forests began to recover by the mid-20th century.⁠[1]

On the evening of Sunday, October 8, 1871, wildfire reached Peshtigo. The fire burned about 1.5 million acres and killed an estimated 1,200 to 2,400 people, about 800 of them in Peshtigo, the deadliest fire in American history. Prolonged drought, land clearing and strong southwesterly winds from a low-pressure system drove its spread.⁠[6][4]

In 1882 the world’s first hydroelectric plant was built in Appleton.⁠[4]

The Progressive movement began in Wisconsin at the turn of the 20th century under Robert M. La Follette, who in 1901 became the first Wisconsin-born governor. Its reforms included a corrupt practices act, a workers’ compensation act and the first state income tax in the United States; in 1911 the legislature enacted the state income tax bill and the Workmen’s Compensation Act.⁠[1][4][4]

The present Capitol was built between 1906 and 1917, the third on the same site.⁠[3]

In 1919 Wisconsin ratified the Eighteenth Amendment, which established Prohibition, and became the first state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. In 1933 Wisconsin voted to repeal Prohibition.⁠[4][4]

In 1953 Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108, launching the policy of termination and relocation, which ended federal recognition of more than fifty tribal governments; many Wisconsin Indians were relocated to Chicago, Milwaukee or St. Paul. On April 30, 1961, the Menominee reservation was terminated and became Menominee County, the state’s 72nd county.⁠[7][4]

In 1973 Congress repealed the 1954 Menominee Termination Act; in 1975 Menominee Indians occupied the Alexian Brothers Novitiate, and in April that year Menominee County reverted to reservation status and the tribe’s federal recognition was restored.⁠[4][7]

In 1965 a new state law prohibited housing discrimination, and in 1967 activists campaigned for an open housing ordinance in Milwaukee.⁠[4][4]

In the 1970s two brothers from the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe band were arrested for spearfishing off the reservation; in 1983 the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Lac Courte Oreilles band, and the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission was formed in 1984. In 1987 a state referendum approving a state lottery also gave Wisconsin tribes the right to operate casino-style gambling, and the Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe, Mohican and Potawatomi later opened casinos.⁠[7]

In 1990 the Milwaukee Parental Choice voucher program was enacted for public and nonsectarian private schools.⁠[4]

On April 26, 2021, the Census Bureau delivered the 2020 census apportionment results to the President. Wisconsin kept its eight seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, with an average of 737,184 people per seat; after the 2010 census it also had eight seats, at 712,279 per seat.⁠[8][9]

Based on the 2020 census, Wisconsin has 10 electoral votes in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.⁠[10]

The legislature consists of the Senate and the Assembly: the Senate has 33 members, each elected from a senate district for a four-year term, and the Assembly has 99 members serving two-year terms; each senate district combines three assembly districts. Elections are held in November of even-numbered years, with 17 and 16 of the 33 senate seats elected in alternate cycles. A new legislature is sworn in each January of odd-numbered years and meets in continuous session for the biennium; the 107th Legislature convened on January 6, 2025, and continues until January 4, 2027.⁠[11]

As of November 2026 the governor is Tony Evers, who was sworn in on January 7, 2019, as the 46th Governor of the State of Wisconsin; his second term began on January 3, 2023. He had previously been elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction three times, in 2009, 2013 and 2017.⁠[12][13][14]

The governor’s office states that Evers was born and raised in Plymouth, earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in educational administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and began his career as a science teacher in Baraboo.⁠[14]

The state Supreme Court has seven justices, who are elected in April to ten-year terms.⁠[15]

Wisconsin is bordered by Lake Superior and MichiganMichiganMichigan is a state of the United States nearly surrounded by the Great Lakes and made up of the Upper and Lower peninsulas; its capital is Lansing and its largest city is Detroit. It was admitted to the Union on January 26, 1837, as the 26th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 10,077,331.Open the full entry’s Upper Peninsula to the north, Lake Michigan to the east, IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is a state of the United States that borders Lake Michigan and the states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa; its capital is Springfield and its largest city is Chicago. It was admitted to the Union on December 3, 1818, as the 21st state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 12,812,508.Open the full entry to the south, and Minnesota and Iowa to the west and southwest; the upper Mississippi River forms part of its western boundary.⁠[2]

In the Census Bureau’s state area measurements (boundaries as of January 1, 2010), Wisconsin has a total area of 65,496 square miles (169,635 square kilometers): 54,158 square miles (140,268 square kilometers) of land and 11,339 square miles (29,367 square kilometers) of water, of which 1,997 square miles (5,172 square kilometers) is inland water and 9,342 square miles (24,195 square kilometers) lies in the Great Lakes.⁠[16]

The Census Bureau estimates Wisconsin’s population at 5,972,787 on July 1, 2025 (Vintage 2025), up 1.3% from the April 1, 2020, estimates base of 5,894,323. Population density in 2020 was 108.8 people per square mile, on a 2020 land area of 54,167.14 square miles.⁠[17]

In the 2020 census the resident population of the 50 states and the District of Columbia totaled 331,449,281, of which Wisconsin accounted for about 1.8%.⁠[18]

Eleven federally recognized American Indian nations are located in Wisconsin: the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Forest County Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk Nation, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, Oneida Nation, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Mole Lake (Sokaogon Chippewa Community) Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Saint Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin and Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians. The Brothertown Indian Nation is not federally or state recognized.⁠[19][7]

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data put Wisconsin’s nominal gross domestic product at $478,781.2 million in 2025, up from $462,235.6 million in 2024. By industry, finance and insurance contributed $45,948.2 million in 2025, and food, beverage and tobacco product manufacturing $13,641.8 million in 2024 (nominal values).⁠[20][21][22]

Wisconsin is a major U.S. producer of milk, butter and cheese and has ranked first nationally in cheese production since 1920. Tourism and recreation are also important to the economy, and its ports handle much of the Great Lakes’ domestic freight.⁠[2][1]

In 1673 Father Marquette wrote, “The river on which we embarked is called Meskousing.” The present spelling “Wisconsin” was made official in 1845.⁠[3]

The unofficial nickname “Badger State” dates from the lead-mining boom that began in southwestern Wisconsin just before 1830, when miners with no time to build houses sheltered in abandoned shafts and burrows, like badgers.⁠[23]

The central shield of the coat of arms shows a plow, a pick and shovel, an arm and hammer, and an anchor, representing agriculture, mining, manufacturing and navigation; it is supported by a sailor and a yeoman, with a horn of plenty below and a badger and the motto “Forward” above. The great seal combines the coat of arms, the words “Great Seal of the State of Wisconsin” and 13 stars. A seal was made when the territory was created in 1836, revised in 1839, replaced at statehood in 1848, changed in 1851 at the instigation of Governor Nelson Dewey and slightly modified in 1881 when it was recast; the motto “Forward” was introduced with the 1851 revision.⁠[24][23]

In 1863 the legislature adopted a flag design by Joint Resolution 4, substantially the same as the regimental flags carried by Wisconsin troops in the Civil War; Chapter 111, Laws of 1913, first set flag specifications in the statutes, calling for a dark blue flag with the coat of arms on each side; and Chapter 286, Laws of 1979, added the word “Wisconsin” and the date “1848” in white above and below the coat of arms. The current flag shows the coat of arms on a royal blue field.⁠[23][24]

The state symbols are listed in Section 1.10 of the Wisconsin Statutes. The state song is “On, Wisconsin!”, composed by William T. Purdy in 1909 and adopted in 1959. The state bird, the robin (Turdus migratorius), the state flower, the wood violet (Viola papilionacea), and the state tree, the sugar maple (Acer saccharum), were made official by Chapter 218, Laws of 1949, after schoolchildren had chosen them in votes in 1926–27, 1909 and 1893 respectively; the badger (Taxidea taxus) became the state animal in 1957, and the dairy cow is the state domestic animal.⁠[23][24]

State of Wisconsin: Official website: https://www.wisconsin.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[25]

Office of the Governor Tony Evers: Official website: https://evers.wi.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[14]