Evansville, WI

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With the removal of native people from southern Wisconsin after the Black Hawk War of 1832 and the establishment of the Wisconsin Territory in 1836, the glaciated oak savannas of southeast Wisconsin became very attractive to adventurous settlers from the east. The first to come to the Evansville area were mostly “Yankees,” who began arriving in 1839 from Vermont, Ohio, and western New York.

By 1845, this small group of homesteaders called the site “The Grove” because of a large stand of timber located just northwest of the small settlement. On Allen Creek, just north of the settlement, Erastus Quivey built a sawmill in 1847, followed soon after by a grist mill in 1848. As more easterners came to the area in search of fertile farmland, the town grew to include several hundred residents who built wood frame homes, shops, and churches. The first town plat was recorded in 1855, over 15 years after the first settlement.

Unlike many other growing communities on the western frontier, most of the first land buyers in Evansville were settlers, not speculators. The planned, not chance, pattern of growth in Evansville provided an element of stability for the community in the early years. Likewise, when the Chicago and Northwestern railroad brought the first rail service to Evansville in 1863, the town continued to grow steadily, not explosively. Agriculture was the solid foundation of economic and social growth for Evansville and the surrounding countryside. Wheat was the main crop during and after the Civil War, soon supplemented by tobacco. As the region grew and prospered, manufacturing became important for the local economy. Most of the businesses were related to serving the agricultural and domestic needs of area g residents. By the late 1870s the pattern of city development was established. The residential, commercial and manufacturing districts and street grid from that period are clearly recognizable today.

In the last decade of the 19th century, the town’s population grew to nearly 1900 inhabitants, and in 1896 Evansville was incorporated as a city. By 1920, most of the building in the historic district was completed. The pattern of gradual, continued economic development that began in the early 1840s was a constant in Evansville for the next 100 years. The emphasis on economic stability and social continuity that was established by Evansville’s Yankee founders and their descendants is reflected in the mostly intact residential and commercial streetscapes found today.