Amish Once Traveled New Glarus Roads – Then They Vanished
Horse-drawn buggies once rolled regularly through New Glarus and nearby farm country, where Amish families lived, worked and sent children to local schools before a sudden and largely unexplained departure in the mid-1970s.
There was a time when seeing an Amish buggy on the roads around New Glarus was ordinary.
Families traveling by horse and carriage moved along county roads. Amish children attended local schools alongside other area students. Farmers worked fields with teams of horses while tourists and longtime residents alike stopped to watch a way of life that already felt old-fashioned by the 1970s.
Then, almost as suddenly as they had arrived, many of the Amish families disappeared.
The story of the Amish around New Glarus remains one of the village’s lesser-known chapters, though older residents still remember it clearly. Some remember friendships formed in school. Others remember Amish families shopping in town, attending auctions or quietly farming in the countryside around New Glarus, Primrose and nearby rural areas.
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