In 1634, Frenchman Jean Nicolet became Wisconsin's first European
explorer, landing at Red Banks, near modern day Green Bay in search of a
passage to the Orient. The French controlled the area until 1763, when
it was ceded to the British.
After the American Revolutionary War, Wisconsin was a part of the U.S.
Northwest Territory. It was then governed as part of Indiana Territory,
Illinois Territory, and Michigan Territory. Wisconsin Territory was
organized on July 3, 1836 and became the 30th state on May 29, 1848.
Wisconsin's political history encompasses, on the one hand, Fighting Bob
La Follette and the Progressive movement; and on the other, Joe
McCarthy, the controversial anti-Communist censured by the Senate during
the 1950s. The first Socialist mayor of a large city in the United
States was Emil Seidel, elected mayor of Milwaukee in 1910; another
Socialist, Daniel Hoan, was mayor of Milwaukee from 1916 to 1940.
The state mineral is Galena, otherwise known as lead sulfide, which
reflects Wisconsin's early mining history. Many town names such as
Mineral Point recall a period in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s when
Wisconsin was an important mining state. When Indian treaties opened up
southwest Wisconsin to settlement, thousands of miners—many of them
immigrants from Cornwall, England—flocked to southern Wisconsin in what
could almost be termed a "lead rush." At one point Wisconsin produced
more than half of the nation's lead. During the boom it appeared that
southwest Wisconsin might become the population center of the state, and
Belmont was briefly the state capital. By the 1840s the
easily-accessible deposits were worked out, and experienced miners were
drawn out of Wisconsin by the California Gold Rush. This period of
mining before and during the early years of statehood directly led to
the development of state's nickname, the "Badger State." Many miners and
their families lived in the mines in which they worked until adequate
above-ground shelters were built and were thus compared to Badgers.
