The Richland County courthouse on November 22, 2015
Richland County was created in 1842 by partitioning Iowa County. The new county was named for the quality of its soil. The city of Richland Center is the county seat. Richland Center was founded in 1851 by Ira Sherwin Hazeltine. Mr. Hazeltine offered to donate land to the county if Richland Center was made the county seat, and in 1852 the state legislature made Richland Center the county seat. Politics has not changed at all in the last 150 years!
Richland County has 16 towns, 5 villages and one city: Richland Center. Probably the most famous resident of Richland Center is Frank Lloyd Wright who was born there in 1867. The only Frank Lloyd Wright building in Richland Center is the A. D. German Warehouse which was built in 1921.
The Richland County courthouse was built in 1889 and remodeled in 1953 and restored in 1983. The courthouse is located at 181 West Seminary Street in Richland Center. I visited on Sunday November 22, 2015 which was the day after the first big snowfall of the season in southern Wisconsin. I walked around the courthouse, then over to Church Street to see the A. D. German warehouse. Then I walked through the downtown area to see the city’s auditorium before heading back to the courthouse. Richland Center is a very nice town and I hope to stop by again someday – I didn’t have the chance to see the Purple Heart Memorial or Veterans Park on this trip.
I have virtually no connections to Richland County at all. As far as I can remember the first time I’ve been to Richland County was in November 2015 when we drove to Richland Center to see a movie at the Center Cinema. We made the drive from Madison because this was the only theater in Wisconsin that was showing the movie we wanted to see.