The Winnebago County Courthouse on July 4, 2014
Winnebago County was created in 1840 from land that had been part of Brown County, though it was mostly inhabited by Native Americans from the Menominee and Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) tribes. The name of the county comes from the Winnebago tribe and apparently means “people of the stinking waters” in the Algonquian languages of the neighboring tribes. This appears to be a reference to Lake Winnebago, which is quite smelly during warm weather. The Winnebago tribe in Wisconsin refer to themselves as the “Ho-Chunk” and that is now the accepted name to use for this tribe.
Oshkosh is the county seat. It was named for Chief Oshkosh who was the chief of the Menominee tribe from 1827 until his death in 1858. The fur trade brought European settlers to the area, but it was the lumber industry that led to the development of Oshkosh. Oshkosh was incorporated as a city in 1853 and the railroad arrived in 1859 which was a further boon to the lumber industry. Oshkosh was known as the “Sawdust Capital of the World” due to the many sawmills in the city. The 1870s saw the founding of the Oshkosh State Normal School (known as UW Oshkosh today) as well as a Great Fire that destroyed homes and businesses on the north side of the Fox River.
The city was also the home of the Oshkosh Brewery, which was formed from the merger of three local breweries around 1894. The flagship brand was Chief Oshkosh which was distributed nationally. The brewery closed in 1971.
The Winnebago County courthouse is located at 415 Jackson Street; it’s on the corner of Jackson Street and Algoma Boulevard, a few blocks north of the Fox River. The UW Oshkosh campus is also near by: just a couple blocks away on Algoma Boulevard. There are some frat houses and such between the courthouse and the campus. I’m sure that was very convenient during the St. Patrick’s Day riots back in the 1970s!
The courthouse was built in 1937 and looks very similar to the old Outagamie County courthouse; or the other way around, as the Winnebago County courthouse was built first. I visited on the July 4th holiday so the area was pretty quiet, but with so many busy streets nearby traffic must be a big concern.
Having grown up in neighboring Outagamie County, I have a lot of memories of Winnebago County. When I was in high school, the Neenah, Menasha and two Oshkosh high schools were in the same athletic conference, so I often went to away football and basketball games in Winnebago County. Neenah had quite a rivalry with Appleton-West in basketball in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Also during high school I took part in the WSMA Solo and Ensemble Music Festival which was held at UW Oshkosh.
During my college years, I would occasionally visit friends in Oshkosh – always trying to avoid the St. Patrick’s Day riots of course. My fondest memory of this time is my only visit to Beaner’s Shot & Beer bar, where we had some beers and a shot or two and played pool one evening.
In 1967 the Village of Winneconne was accidentally left off of the official Wisconsin highway map due to a production error. This eventually led to Winneconne “seceding” from the state – something that for some reason captured my imagination as a ten year old boy. Every year the village holds a “Sovereign State Days” festival.
Since finishing high school, I don’t really have much of an excuse to visit Winnebago county very much; it’s more of a place to drive through. Of course I used to fly in and out of Wittman Field in Oshkosh, but scheduled airline service has favored Appleton over both Oshkosh and Green Bay since the 1980s. Wittman Field is probably best known for hosting the annual EAA “fly in” or “AirVenture” as they call it now. The EAA museum is located at Wittman Field and it’s definitely worth visiting.