Photos

I was in Wisconsin on business and decided to visit old friends from both high school and college who live in Madison. The college friend's husband teaches at the University of Wisconsin and this photo was taken a few hundred yards from the campus on a great pedestrian street called State Street. It is full of shopping, coffee shops and great little places to eat. I was fortunate enough to have great weather while I was there. Their spring was just beginning (as you can see from the bare trees) while ours has been full blown for three months.

Before the arrival of European settlers, the Madison area was home to Native Americans for nearly 12,000 years. Beginning in 1837, Yankee, English, Irish, German and Scandinavian settlers flocked to the rapidly growing community named for James Madison. Known for its natural beauty and healthful conditions, Madison's designation as the capital of Wisconsin guaranteed its growth as a center of state politics and education. By the time Madison became a city in 1856, the community had grown to more than 9,000 residents.

"Wisconsin . . . is commonly regarded as a Gibralter of the wets — sort of a Utopia where everyone drinks their fill and John Barleycorn still holds forth in splendor." So began Frank Buckley of the Bureau of Prohibition in his 1929 survey of Prohibition enforcement in Wisconsin. Buckley's survey of Wisconsin provides a detailed portrait of the state soon after citizens had voted to repeal the state's own Prohibition enforcement act. In both statistical tables and description, Buckley describes Prohibition conditions in each county and provides his own colorful observations of life in select cities, including Madison, home of the "queen of bootleggers". This is ironic considering that the University of Wisconsin, based in Madison, is the only U.S. university campus to have its own microbrewery on campus!

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/madison/docs.asp