Wisconsin - Dairy, Manufacturing, and 5.9 Million People Between Two Great Lakes
Wisconsin sits between Lake Superior in the north and Lake Michigan in the east, a position that has defined its settlement patterns, its shipping routes, and its climate for nearly two centuries. The state covers 65,496 square miles and holds about 5.9 million residents. Milwaukee, on the western shore of Lake Michigan, is the largest city at roughly 565,000 people, while Madison, the capital, sits 75 miles west between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona and holds about 280,000. Green Bay, at the head of the bay that gives it its name, counts about 105,000 residents and is the home of the Green Bay Packers, the only publicly owned franchise in the National Football League.
The state is organized into 72 counties and still markets itself as America's Dairyland. Wisconsin produces more cheese than any other state, leads the country in cranberry output, and ranks near the top in milk production behind California. The dairy industry remains politically influential, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison operates one of the country's largest land-grant agricultural research programs. Corn and soybeans fill in the rest of the southern and western farmland, and the Driftless Area in the southwest is an unglaciated region of deep valleys and limestone bluffs that looks very different from the flat till plains to the north and east.
Milwaukee's economy was built on manufacturing. Harley-Davidson still assembles motorcycles there, Miller Brewing operates under Molson Coors, and the Bucks play in the Fiserv Forum downtown. Kohler, Oscar Mayer, Kimberly-Clark, and SC Johnson are headquartered elsewhere in the state, spreading industrial payrolls well beyond the largest metro. The Port of Milwaukee moves grain, salt, and heavy equipment through the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor along Interstate 94 functions as a single labor market in practice.
Door County, the peninsula that extends into Lake Michigan north of Green Bay, draws summer tourism that doubles the local population between June and September. Lake Superior's south shore at Ashland and Bayfield, the Apostle Islands, and the forests of the northern counties pull a separate vacation crowd. Winters are long and cold across the state, and the Wisconsin Dells has turned its sandstone gorges into the self-declared Waterpark Capital of the World.
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Wisconsin sits between Lake Superior in the north and Lake Michigan in the east, a position that has defined its settlement patterns, its shipping routes, and its climate for nearly two centuries. The state covers 65,496 square miles and holds about 5.9 million residents. Milwaukee, on the western shore of Lake Michigan, is the largest city at roughly 565,000 people, while Madison, the capital, sits 75 miles west between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona and holds about 280,000. Green Bay, at the head of the bay that gives it its name, counts about 105,000 residents and is the home of the Green Bay Packers, the only publicly owned franchise in the National Football League.
The state is organized into 72 counties and still markets itself as America's Dairyland. Wisconsin produces more cheese than any other state, leads the country in cranberry output, and ranks near the top in milk production behind California. The dairy industry remains politically influential, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison operates one of the country's largest land-grant agricultural research programs. Corn and soybeans fill in the rest of the southern and western farmland, and the Driftless Area in the southwest is an unglaciated region of deep valleys and limestone bluffs that looks very different from the flat till plains to the north and east.
Milwaukee's economy was built on manufacturing. Harley-Davidson still assembles motorcycles there, Miller Brewing operates under Molson Coors, and the Bucks play in the Fiserv Forum downtown. Kohler, Oscar Mayer, Kimberly-Clark, and SC Johnson are headquartered elsewhere in the state, spreading industrial payrolls well beyond the largest metro. The Port of Milwaukee moves grain, salt, and heavy equipment through the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor along Interstate 94 functions as a single labor market in practice.
Door County, the peninsula that extends into Lake Michigan north of Green Bay, draws summer tourism that doubles the local population between June and September. Lake Superior's south shore at Ashland and Bayfield, the Apostle Islands, and the forests of the northern counties pull a separate vacation crowd. Winters are long and cold across the state, and the Wisconsin Dells has turned its sandstone gorges into the self-declared Waterpark Capital of the World.
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