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Settlers first began moving into the area around Mazomanie in the 1840s. Many of these first pioneers were members of the British Temperance Emigration Society, popular in the Yorkshire and Lancashire regions of England. Dover, now a ghost town, was the first village they founded. This site was gradually abandoned after the arrival of the railroad. Mazomanie was named by Edward Brodhead, a superintendent of the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad, which recorded the original plat of the village in 1855. The village was named after an Indian chief whose name, when translated, means "Iron that Walks". Prior to the coming of the railroad the area around the village was sparsely settled. By the time the first train arrived on June 7, 1856, Mazomanie contained over eighty buildings. Twenty years later it was the second largest city in Dane County with a population numbering over 1,100. It was large enough to attract the Ringling Brothers Classic and Comic Concert Company from nearby Baraboo for their first public performance in 1882.
The Railroad chose Mazomanie as a service area for its operations and built a water tower, tumtable, and maintenance buildings along the track east of Brodhead Street. Only the coal sheds survive. The railroad also created Lake Marion when it laid its tracks along Black Earth Creek south of the village. Water impounded by the lake was harnessedd to power the Lynch and Walker Flouring Mill, which continued to use water power into the 1950's. In 1877 John Appleby invented the grain knotter in Mazomanie. The village created a municipally operated electric utility in 1885, one of the first of its kind. The rapid growth of the 1850's to 1870's slowed appreciably in the 1880's. Although new buildings were built and several old ones replaced, the village remained roughly the same size, adding only about two hundred new residents over the next century. Growth has again increased beginning in the 1980's, and the population now stands at about 1,425 persons.
The slow growth experienced by the village has resulted in remarkably well preserved buildings dating back to the 1850's. Thirty-four of the commercial buildings in the downtown have been named to the National Register of Historic Places. Most are of the commercial vernacular form with large glass windows and wood panel kickplates on the street level and second floor facades supported by iron columns. Nearly all of these details are still present in the remaining buildings, although some have been covered by later remodeling. A few of the more notable buildings in the downtown include the Schmitz Building (1879), the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad Depot (1857), and the Lynch and Walker Flouring Mill (1857/1900). |
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