Cedarburg is a town in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, United States, and is in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. The town was created in 1849 and at the time of the 2020 census had a population of 6,162.
German and Irish immigrants first settled in Cedarburg in the 1840s. Their centers of settlement became the unincorporated communities of Decker Corner, Hamilton, and Horns Corners, as well as the City of Cedarburg, which is located partially within the town.
The town contains three sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places: the Cedarburg covered bridge, the Concordia Mill, and the Hamilton Historic District. The bridge is the last historic covered bridge in the state and is featured on the town logo.
History
The earliest evidence of humans in the Cedarburg area is the Hilgen Spring Mound Site, located in the eastern part of the city of Cedarburg, near Cedar Creek. The site consists of three conical burial mounds constructed by early Woodland period Mound Builders. In 1968, archaeologists from the Milwaukee Public Museum found human burials and artifacts, including stone altars, arrowheads, and pottery shards, during an excavation of one of the mounds. Radiocarbon samples from the excavation date the mounds' construction to approximately 480 BCE, making it one of the oldest mound groups in the state.
In the early 19th century, the land was inhabited by Native Americans, including the Potawatomi and Sauk tribes. The Potawatomi surrendered the land the United States Federal Government in 1833 through the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which (after being ratified in 1835) required them to leave Wisconsin by 1838. While many Native people moved west of the Mississippi River to Kansas, some chose to remain, and were referred to as "strolling Potawatomi" in contemporary documents because many of them were migrants who subsisted by squatting on their ancestral lands, which were now owned by white settlers. Eventually the Potawatomi who evaded forced removal gathered in northern Wisconsin, where they formed the Forest County Potawatomi Community.
The first white settlement in the Cedarburg area was a community called "New Dublin," which later became Hamilton. The first resident was Joseph Gardenier, who built a log shanty on Cedar Creek as his headquarters for surveying for the construction of the Green Bay Road. In 1848, Hamilton became the first stop on the stagecoach route between Milwaukee and Green Bay.
Most of Cedarburg's early settlers were German immigrants. Ludwig Wilhelm Groth is usually credited with being the first settler of Cedarburg. He purchased land from the government on October 22, 1842, and began platting the banks of Cedar Creek. The Wisconsin state legislature created the Town of Cedarburg on March 2, 1849.
The first train line, which eventually became part of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway, began running through Cedarburg in 1870. Cedarburg continued to grow and prosper due to its rail connections, while the surrounding communities of Hamilton, Decker Corner and Horns Corners remained more characteristically rural. The City of Cedarburg incorporated from some of the town's land in 1885.
The Excelsior Mill was built on Cedar Creek in the town in 1871 for $21,000. The mill produced both flour and lumber. In 1885, a large fire gutted the stone mill and destroyed the wooden outbuildings, causing the business to close. In 1890, John Weber, who owned the Columbia Mill upstream in the City of Cedarburg, bought the property and retooled the mill as a wire and nail factory.
Cedarburg grew rapidly during the post-war suburbanization and economic prosperity, and the City of Cedarburg began to annex land from the town for residential subdivisions.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the Town of Cedarburg has a total area of 25.8 square miles (66.9 km2), of which, 25.6 square miles (66.3 km2) of it is land and 0.2 square miles (0.6 km2) of it (0.93%) is water.
The City of Cedarburg is mostly located in what was formerly the town's southeastern quadrant. The town is also bordered by the Town of Saukville and the Town of Trenton to the north, the Village of Grafton and the Town of Grafton to the east, the City of Mequon to the south, and the Town of Jackson to the west.
The unincorporated communities of Decker Corner, Hamilton, and Horns Corners are also located in the town.