Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state in the north-central, Midwest and Great Lakes regions of the country. It is the 23rd-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. The state capital is Madison, and its largest city is Milwaukee, which is on the western shore of Lake Michigan.
About Wisconsin in brief
Wisconsin is a U.S. state in the north-central, Midwest and Great Lakes regions of the country. It is the 23rd-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. The state capital is Madison, and its largest city is Milwaukee, which is on the western shore of Lake Michigan. The word Wisconsin originates from the name given to the Wisconsin River by one of the Algonquian-speaking Native American groups living in the region at the time of European contact. Like neighboring Minnesota, the state remains a center of German American and Scandinavian American culture. Wisconsin has been home to a wide variety of cultures over the past 14,000 years. The first people arrived around 10,000 BCE during the Wisconsin Glaciation and hunted now-extinct ice age animals such as the Boaz mastodon, a prehistoric mastodon skeleton unearthed along with spear points in southwest Wisconsin. After the ice age ended around 8000 BCE, people in the subsequent Archaic period lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering food from wild plants. Agricultural societies emerged gradually over the Woodland period between 1000 BCE to 1000 CE. Toward the end of this period, Wisconsin was the heartland of the \”Effigy Mound culture\”, which built thousands of animal-shaped mounds across the landscape. Later, between 1000 and 1500 CE, the Mississippian and Oneota cultures built substantial settlements including the fortified village at Aztalan in southeast Wisconsin.
The Oneota may be the ancestors of the modern Ioway and Ho-Chunk nations who shared the Wisconsin region with the Menominee at theTime of European Contact. The name Wisconsin and its original meaning have both grown obscure. While interpretations vary, most implicate the river and the red sandstone that lines its banks. One leading theory holds that the name originated from the Miami word Meskonsing, meaning \”it lies red\”, a reference to the setting of theWisconsin River as it flows through the reddish sandstone of the Wisconsin Dells. Other theories include claims that the word originated from one of a variety of Ojibwa words meaning \”red stone place\”, \”where the waters gather\”, or \”great rock\”. Wisconsin is known as \”America’s Dairyland\”; it is particularly famous for its cheese. Wisconsin is third to Ontario and Michigan in the length of its Great Lakes coastline. In 1673, French explorer Jacques Marquette was the first European to reach the Wisconsin river, arriving in 1673 and calling the river Meskousing in his journal. The legislature of Wisconsin Territory made the current spelling official in 1845. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many European settlers entered the state, many of whom emigrated from Germany and Scandinavia. It was probably Jean Nicolet, who became Wisconsin’s first European explorer, who came ashore near Green Banks in 1634, and it is assumed that he came ashore in 1654–1666.
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This page is based on the article Wisconsin published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 25, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
