Why I Love Wisconsin
At the midpoint under the sky, you can just see the edge of Taliesin in this photo I took in August 2005 from Highway County C.
I thought about Wright’s essay of that name (online here(opens in new tab) from the FLLW Foundation(opens in new tab)) and decided to write about why I love Wisconsin today.
WHY?
because recent warm and stormy weather reminded me of my first month in this state decades ago.
So in this post I’ll give you both a history lesson about me, and,
well,
why I have come to love Wisconsin.
although I:
- am still particular about Philly cheesesteaks(opens in new tab)
no peppers, no ketchup, and the buns in Philly might really get their taste due to the water out there
(but only when my friend DDD makes it)
- and didn’t realize people couldn’t understand what I meant when saying “quarter of” when I was telling them, say, 4:45 p.m.
read here(opens in new tab) about this idiom(opens in new tab) on Reddit
Coming back to my first Wisconsin summer 30+ years ago:
I’d moved here in early June before starting school(opens in new tab) and later that month experienced my first midwestern thunderstorm.
I hadn’t recalled experiencing such a long, booming(opens in new tab) deluge since I was a kid.
I laid there in bed with the thunder lighting up the room, thinking that what I was experiencing was rare.
THEN, IN CONTRAST
there were the Wisconsin winters.
I was so naïve I did not know that in Wisconsin the temperatures stay below freezing for months.
I remember walking over snowpiles my first March, singing “I hate Wisconsin,” over and over again.
Ok, fine Keiran: weren’t you gonna write about how you love Wisconsin as opposed to all of this—apparently—cr*ppy weather?
Of course.
While I was happily surprised by the Art Institute of Chicago(opens in new tab), I lived in Wisconsin’s capitol because I was interested in the Art History curriculum. However, I didn’t know that Madison had only one large museum, in the building(opens in new tab) in which I matriculated.
And, while Milwaukee was (is) a hell of a lot more interesting than what I had seen on television (Laverne and Shirley(opens in new tab)), we were mostly too busy studying to drive out there.
Finally, what made me love Wisconsin is Frank Lloyd Wright: starting when I began working(opens in new tab) in the Valley where he built his home.
And while working out here, I kept finding interesting things about his state, which is more than beer, cheese, and cows.
while acknowledging Senator McCarthy(opens in new tab), Jeffrey Dahmer(opens in new tab), Ed Gein(opens in new tab); not to mention a book just on death in small-town(opens in new tab) Wisconsin.
Here are some things I learned:
- Do you know that the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, Zona Gale(opens in new tab), was born here in Portage?
By the way, Wright acknowledged that she was unimpressed by him when he tried to woo her in 1924:
“… she was always glad to see us…, although she said she valued her Regency at the University of Wisconsin too much ever to be seen with me in public.“1
- it’s the birthplace of the ‘Father of the National Parks”, John Muir(opens in new tab), who, when he went to college(opens in new tab), built this cool steampunk clock in wood for reading books:
You can see this on the first floor of the main building at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison(opens in new tab). The device is explained in this page at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/159700503902/?multi_permalinks=10156110600583903&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen(opens in new tab)
Then
- I found out that Earth Day(opens in new tab) was innovated by a Wisconsin Senator (and former Governor), Gaylord Nelson(opens in new tab).
- That modern astrophysics(opens in new tab) was born there.
- That it’s the first place that had workman’s comp(opens in new tab), which is an outgrowth of the mega-cool Wisconsin Idea(opens in new tab).
In short, around the year 1900, a University President and a WI governor had the idea to bring education to everyone in this rural state. Therefore, its motto is, essentially,
“The boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state.”
Professors regularly got out of the city and gave presentations in its small towns.
Wisconsin had one of the first public radio stations(opens in new tab) in the nation, and used it to broadcast music and art classes so schoolkids in tiny towns would learn about this every day.
As a result, they also started “Chapter-a-Day” where new books would be read
which I first mentioned here(opens in new tab).
Expanding on this, University faculty member Robert E. Gard(opens in new tab) decided in 1967 to bring the arts to small communities. One of those communities is Spring Green (where our movie theater is named The Gard(opens in new tab)).
- And, natch, there’s Fighting Bob LaFollette(opens in new tab) who I confess I love in part because of his nickname and his pompadour:
This image came from a Library of Congress image in the public domain, here(opens in new tab). Photographer’s name is unknown.
Although
before I knew about some of these people, one night while hanging out at a local bar I learned about the Driftless Area(opens in new tab). Someone who worked at the DNR(opens in new tab) (I think) explained to me the unique geological history that spared parts of Wisconsin from the glaciers.
The guy told me how the glaciers had stopped moving because of hills to the north, then a huge lake was created. Thousands of years later the ice dam broke and carved through the land to the Mississippi River. The resulting geography in southwestern Wisconsin (and shared with contiguous states) includes a lack of glacial drift.
Here’s Wisconsin Public Radio on it:
But the name covering the area comes from the absence of glacial drift, which the group Driftless Wisconsin describes as the deposits of silt, gravel and rock that glaciers would have left behind had they passed through this part of southwestern Wisconsin.
There’s a representation of these land forms from the Mississippi Valley Conservancy:
(opens in new tab)(opens in new tab)
Frank Lloyd Wright
eluded to some of this in “Why I Love Wisconsin”. He wrote how:
These ranges of low hills that make these fertile valleys of southwestern Wisconsin by leading down to the great sandy plain that was once the bed of a mightier Wisconsin River than any of us have ever seen.2
And I
have come to believe that Wright’s architecture would have been different if he had not spent his summers out here in these low, “human-sized” hills that open into surprising valleys. Just like his compressed openings open into his interior spaces where he wants you to linger.
Additionally,
this area also has the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway(opens in new tab) that was:
created in 1989 to protect the last free-flowing 92 miles to the confluence of the Mississippi River for recreational purposes and to help protect natural wildlife habitats…. There are no rapids or dams from Sauk Prairie to the river’s confluence with the Mississippi River at Wyalusing State Park.
Along its path, the Lower Wisconsin Riverway is bordered by 95,000 acres of natural lands. 45,000 of those acres are state owned, natural areas, wildlife areas and state parks.
Those canoeing on it don’t see built-up areas. Plus, people can hang out on the sandbars at night and not see development on either side of the river.
In 2020, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation noted the Riverway “Receives Wetland of International Importance Designation(opens in new tab)“. Along with a photo of Wright walking through the future Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center(opens in new tab), their page includes a map of the riverway.
Lastly, Wisconsin is the birthplace of:
August Derleth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Derleth(opens in new tab)
Conservationist Aldo Leopold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold(opens in new tab)
Liberace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberace(opens in new tab)
Orson Welles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles(opens in new tab)
And this expanded list in Wikipedia(opens in new tab) of other people from my state (plus other things, like Harley-Davidson(opens in new tab), that I’m sure I missed): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Wisconsin(opens in new tab).
First published July 9, 2026.
Notes
- Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography, new and revised ed. (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1943), 508.
-
Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings, volume 3: 1931-39. Edited by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, introduction by Kenneth Frampton (Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York City, 1993), 134-38.
