Green County Courthouse on September 2, 2012
The idea for this project goes back to 1988. I was on a guided tour of Scandinavia and one of the couples on the tour was from Texas. One night at dinner they mentioned that one of their hobbies, for lack of a better term, was visiting Texas county courthouses. Their goal was to visit each county in Texas and take a picture of the courthouse. Texas has 254 counties, so this was not a trivial goal by any means. Fortunately they were retired and in good health so they had plenty of time to travel. If I remember correctly they were past halfway in 1988.
If we skip ahead 30 years and make a small digression, in 2008 I returned to recreational bike riding; I had simply gotten out of the habit following surgery in 2006. Instead of riding just on roads or paved trails, I began to explore some of the unpaved trails in the area, such as the Military Ridge State Trail. In 2009 I expanded my biking to Green County and rode on the Sugar River Trail which runs from New Glarus to Brodhead and intersects with the Badger State Trail. A year later I decided to ride to Monroe from New Glarus by taking the Sugar River Trail to Monticello and then turning onto the Badger State Trail which passes through Monroe on its way to the Illinois border. I hadn’t been to Monroe in many years: my father grew up there and I remember visiting Monroe as a child with my grandmother. I left the bike trail and rode to the center of town. And there on the square was the Green County courthouse just as I remembered it, along with the old buildings on the square. I took some pictures and then headed back to New Glarus.
After this visit in 2010, I began to bike to Monroe more frequently and occasionally drive there for events like Cheese Days. As I was taking pictures of the Green County courthouse on a bike ride in 2012, I remembered the couple from Texas and I decided to visit each county in Wisconsin and take a picture of the county courthouse. And to keep track of my progress, I thought I would create a web site with all of the photos and other information I came across about each county. Thankfully Wisconsin has only 72 counties!
So that is my goal. For each county I will post at least one picture that I have taken of the current county courthouse, along with other photos from the county seat or other locations in the county. I plan to include relevant links about each county concerning its government, tourist attractions and notable people. And I hope to include some text about my visit to the county when I took the pictures, plus any memories of my time in the county over the years.