Wisconsin - History - Britannica

Early settlement

In 1634 French explorer Jean Nicolet was most likely the first European to enter what would become the state of Wisconsin. The area remained under French control until 1763, when it was acquired by the British. It was subsequently ceded to the United States by the Peace of Paris treaties in 1783.

The Americans quickly became interested in settling the land and implemented profound changes. They cleared the land for farms; built houses, roads, and towns; and cut the timber for lumber. They quickly dispossessed the Native Americans of their land through treaties and overwhelming military defeats. They occupied the land, initially in the southwest, as lead miners and subsequently as pioneer farmers. By 1829 more than 4,000 lead miners worked in southwestern Wisconsin, in and around Mineral Point. An influx of immigrants from northern Europe began in the 1830s and grew in volume through the following decades. The Wisconsin Territory (consisting of present-day Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and parts of North and South Dakota) was created in 1836. Two years later the territory became smaller when land west of the Mississippi became part of Iowa Territory. Wisconsin was admitted to the union as the 30th state in 1848. By 1850 the population of Wisconsin had increased from about 30,000 to more than 300,000, and most of the agriculturally suitable areas had been occupied by 1880. In the 1880s iron ore was being mined in the north.

Agriculture generally developed after mining and then mostly in the southern two-thirds of the state, where dairying became dominant. (Since 1920 Wisconsin has ranked first in the country in cheese production and at or near the top in the production of milk and other dairy products.) By the 1870s commercial lumbering reached Wisconsin’s northern forests. Timber exploitation continued for about 40 more years, leaving a devastated countryside that only since the mid-20th century has begun to recover through the regrowth of timber and ecofriendly tourism.

Throughout the 1850s Wisconsin was a leader in the abolition of slavery. Slaves passed through the Underground Railroad on their way to Canada. In 1854 Wisconsin abolitionists held meetings in a schoolhouse in Ripon, where they recommended forming a new political party called Republican. (Today the Little White Schoolhouse, which is claimed to be the birthplace of the Republican Party, is a museum and national landmark.) That same year the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional.