Heritage

Stories and archival features focused on New Glarus history, from early settlement and Swiss heritage to long-forgotten events, buildings, and people. This section preserves the community’s past while connecting it to the present.

125 posts

Viewing Cheese Days Through a New Glarus Lens

Long before Monroe turned cheese into a festival, Swiss settlers in New Glarus helped build the dairy culture behind it. From cows and cheesemaking to embroidery, parade floats and royalty, New Glarus has long been woven into Cheese Days.

by Todd Klassy

Historic Photo: Looking North on 2nd Street

From 2nd Street and 5th Avenue, this historic New Glarus view captures a downtown of brick storefronts, early automobiles, overhead wires, a lumber yard, a likely garage and the Pet Milk plant rising prominently in the distance beyond.

by Todd Klassy

The Changing Political Map Beneath New Glarus

Long before Swiss settlers arrived in 1845, the ground beneath New Glarus passed through French and British claims, overlapping Virginia and Massachusetts claims, four U.S. territories and two counties before Green County finally appeared on the map. And then it kept changing.

by Todd Klassy

What Is Kilby? The History of a New Glarus Tradition

Long before Oktoberfest filled downtown New Glarus, Kilby brought worship, reunions, mutton and honey, shooting contests, baseball and all-night dances to the village. The Swiss tradition has survived here in a quieter form for more than 160 years.

by Todd Klassy

Historic Photo: Swiss Church During Construction

This rare photograph appears to capture New Glarus’ Swiss Reformed Church near the end of construction, preserving original Gothic spires, fleur-de-lis finials and other architectural details that later disappeared within a generation.

by Todd Klassy

New Glarus Puts Numbers on Its Past

A 1919 map captures New Glarus replacing familiar Swiss street names with numbers, raising a compelling question: Was the change simply civic modernization, or part of the Americanization pressure that reshaped the village during World War I?

by Todd Klassy

Historic Photo: The New Glarus Corner That Barely Changed

A Wisconsin Historical Society photo of 16 and 18 6th Avenue captures Puempel’s, the old post office and a streetscape that, more than 50 years later, remains strikingly familiar to anyone who knows downtown New Glarus well today.

by Todd Klassy

A New Glarus Airman’s Escape from One of Europe's Darkest POW Camps

A Green County-born airman who later made New Glarus home survived a crippled B-24 over enemy territory, internment at a notorious Swiss prisoner-of-war camp — then he repeatedly escaped captivity on a dangerous journey back toward Allied lines during World War II in Europe.

by Todd Klassy

Historic Photo: The Wilhelm Tell Usherettes

A historic photograph of 22 New Glarus Wilhelm Tell Usherettes captures an earlier generation of a tradition that began with the pageant in 1938, added its colorful cantonal costumes in 1940 and continues with young performers today.

by Todd Klassy

Inside the Old New Glarus Grade School

For nearly a century New Glarus children climbed its staircases, crowded its hallways, and learned penmanship, speed reading and elocution in classrooms beneath ceilings that seemed impossibly high. The former school was more than a building. It became a warehouse of community memories.

by Todd Klassy

Historic Photo: A Different Highway 69 at New Glarus Woods

A 1936 DNR archive photo captures New Glarus Woods just two years after it became a state park, showing an earlier Highway 69 alignment, a simple roadside sign and a landscape that remains surprisingly recognizable nearly 90 years later.

by Todd Klassy

Historic Photo: An ‘Up to Date’ New Glarus Dairy

A postcard mailed from New Glarus in 1912 captures a prosperous dairy farm, dozens of cattle and even an early automobile at a moment when Green County’s booming cheese industry was transforming farms — and New Glarus itself.

by Todd Klassy

Showing 12 of 125 total posts

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