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Wisconsin is geographically unique. It’s the only state that contains the point at 45 degrees north latitude, 90 degrees west longitude, marking the center of both the Northern and Western Hemispheres. But where, exactly, is it?

There’s a geographical marker in Marathon County known is the “Poniatowski Marker" that claims to be this point. The marker states that the location is (a) midway between the Equator (the baseline for latitude, at 0 degrees) and the North Pole (at 90 degrees north) and...

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic…that form ever follows function.
- Louis Sullivan, 1896

In many ways, Columbus (Columbia County) looks like a lot of other small Wisconsin cities. The area of modern commercial and industrial development, with its car dealerships and fast-food establishments, straddles the intersection of Highways 16 and 151. Less than a mile to the east, the historic commercial buildings downtown have been converted to modern uses – restaurants,...

History is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood.
- Carl Jung

This is the third and final post in a series on fatal airplane accidents in Wisconsin. [Read Part 1 and Part 2.]

The deadliest military airplane accident in Wisconsin occurred on November 18, 1966, when a B-52 bomber crashed fifteen miles south of Hayward, in Sawyer County, killing all nine crew members.

The bomber was on a ten-hour training mission from Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana, and had...

“To live without risk for me would be tantamount to death.”
- Jacqueline Cochran

Nearly a decade before Otis Redding (see Oddsconsin 39), Lake Monona was the site of another fatal airplane crash. Although the loss of life was not as great, the story is still a tragic one.

On May 5, 1958, Lt. Gerald Stull was on a routine training flight in an Air Force F-102 Delta Dagger, a single-seat fighter/interceptor. [1] At 1:30 pm, three miles south of the runway at Truax Field in Madison, Stull radioed...

Lake Monona, one of the four lakes in the Madison area, has been the scene of more than one fatal airplane crash. It’s a small lake, only about five square miles in size, but it’s on the flight path for airplanes landing at Madison’s airport, now called Dane County Regional Airport, but once known as Madison Municipal Airport.

The most famous of these crashes took the lives of Otis Redding – a Soul artist from Macon, Georgia – and most of his band members. The accident occurred on December 10,...

The City of Cedarburg (Ozaukee County) has one of only a handful of remaining Wadhams pagoda-style gas stations, which once dotted the region. Capitalizing on the increased popularity of the private automobile in the early 1900s, the Wadhams Oil Company built more than a hundred stations between 1917 and 1930 in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Upper Michigan. [1][2]

Wadhams was one of the first oil companies to build roadside stations to pump gas directly into vehicles from underground tanks, making...

Before Bucky Badger, there was Numen Lumen.

Numen Lumen was the University of Wisconsin’s first official seal. [1] It is now considered historic and is used only in special circumstances. UW-Madison’s current logo, a crest emblazoned with a “W” inside a shield, is a representation of an architectural element found on the university’s Field House. [2][3]

The Numen Lumen seal was designed in 1854 – six years after the university was founded – by John Hiram Lathrop, UW’s first chancellor. It...

Does Wisconsin have a lot of churches? The GNIS (Geographic Names Information System), the official federal repository of geographic feature names, listed 3,578 of them in 2021. [1] That’s fifty churches per county, or one for every 1,650 people.

Churches have since been removed from GNIS, due to the cost of keeping the listing current. Determining the exact number of churches is complicated. In the 2020 US Religion Census, a “church” is not necessarily a single building, but a religious body...

The old Bayfield County courthouse in the city of Bayfield – now home to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore Visitor Center – has an interesting and unexpected history. A series of photos hanging on the walls of the first floor tells the story.

The first picture shows the courthouse in 1888, a few years after construction. At this time, Bayfield was the county seat. The courthouse looks much the same today, except that the clock tower is now gone.

A second picture shows the courthouse after...

This is the 3rd part of a 3-part series. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

After the magnetic experiments ended, UW-Madison’s underground observatory lay dormant until 1896, when Professor Harry L. Russell was given permission by the UW Board of Regents to use it to conduct experiments on cheese curing. [1]

Russell, a native Wisconsinite, came to the University of Wisconsin in 1893 to head dairy-related bacteriological work at the Agricultural Experiment Station. In 1896, William A. Henry,...

This is the 2nd part of a 3-part series. Read part 1 here.

UW-Madison’s dermestarium was not always full of beetles. It was built in 1876 as an observatory to conduct measurements of the earth’s magnetic field. In 1875, the US Coast Survey – a federal scientific agency – approached the University of Wisconsin about establishing the observatory. What attracted their interest was Professor John E. Davies and his work on magnetism. Davies (1839-1900) taught science at Lawrence College, his alma...

Since 1950, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has operated a dermestarium in a small underground chamber on campus. What’s a dermestarium? The word is derived from Latin and roughly translates into “a place for eating skin.” The university’s dermestarium is home to a colony of thousands of dermestid beetles, whose job is to clean animal skeletons so that they can be preserved for study and research.

The existence of the dermestarium is hardly a secret. [1][2][3][4][5] What makes the facility...

Nineteenth-century water towers still stand in several Wisconsin communities, including Sun Prairie [1], Clinton [2], Beloit [3], Benton [4], Monroe [5] and Burlington [6], to name a few. These towers were built to supply the water needs of growing communities, including fire-fighting, steam locomotives and residential and commercial uses.

These towers typically consisted of a large, elevated tank containing thousands of gallons of water. Water was pumped into the tank from a nearby source,...

Watch World War III on pay TV
Before your television melts away
- The Crown City Four,
Watch World War III on Pay TV, 1960

This is the final part in a series about M-74, the Nike nuclear missile site in Waukesha. [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

While there are remnants of the former M-74 Nike missile site at Hillcrest Park, there seems to be little at Missile Park except a meadow. The former launch pads are either gone or covered by weeds. It would take more digging (metaphorically and perhaps...

Uranium fission’s
Protecting the vision
Of freedom we’ve cherished so long
- The Brothers-in-Law, The Flowers that
Boom in the Spring, 1969

This is Part 3 in a series about M-74, the Nike nuclear missile site in Waukesha. [Part 1] [Part 2]

During their active years, the locations of Nike bases in the US were not secret and are clearly visible on air photos from the era. The August 1963 US Department of Agriculture photo heading this post clearly shows M-74’s battery control and launch areas in...

Einstein can't be classed as witless
He claimed atoms were the littlest
When you did a bit of splitting-em-ness
Frightened everybody shitless
- Ian Dury, There Ain’t Half Been
Some Clever Bastards, 1978

This is Part 2 in a series about M-74, the Nike nuclear missile site in Waukesha. [Part 1]

The first-generation Nike missile, called Ajax, was 12 inches in diameter and 21 feet in length. It weighed over a ton and carried three high-explosive conventional (non-nuclear) warheads. (A warhead is the...

So long, Mom
I’m off to drop the bomb
So don’t wait up for me
- Tom Lehrer, So Long, Mom
(A Song for World War III), 1965

What is this place? It’s a public park, but there are no swings or slides. A few grim cinder-block buildings are scattered on the grounds. There’s a large, circular concrete pad behind a chain-link fence. Nearby, a hexagonal metal platform sits atop a cylindrical tower. It’s encased in corrugated metal painted in vile shades of military green.

The mystery is solved by a...

All those people, all those lives, where are they now?
- Steven Patrick Morrissey, Cemetry Gates

Wisconsin is a giant boneyard. Cemeteries dot every corner of the state. But because there’s no central registry of cemeteries, no one, not even the Wisconsin Cemetery Board, is sure where they all are or even how many exist. Some cemeteries are maintained by churches, others by cities and villages, and still others by towns. And these are only European cemeteries. Added to this are Native...

South Greenville Grange, also known as Grange No. 225, is the oldest continuously active Grange in Wisconsin. Organized on October 24, 1873, it is one of over five hundred Granges that once dotted the state. [1] The Grange Hall, built in 1928, sits at the corner of State Hwy 76 and County Road BB in Outagamie County. The two-story brick building is the fifth in a series, each one larger than its predecessor. [2]

South Greenville Grange Hall is listed in the National Register of Historic Places...

A rustic stone tower sits atop a hill on the north side of Elk Mound, a small village in Dunn County. Visible from I-94 just west of Eau Claire, it resembles a 12th-century Norman fortification. Crowned by a crenellated parapet wall, it seems to have been designed to fire projectiles at attacking armies. Did the Normans invade Wisconsin after conquering Britain?

The tower is accessible by an asphalt road. With an elevation gain of 200 feet, the road is steep and surprisingly long. The tower...