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Calamine, Wisconsin facts for kids

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Calamine, Wisconsin
Calamine, Wisconsin is located in Wisconsin
Calamine, Wisconsin
Calamine, Wisconsin
Location in Wisconsin
Calamine, Wisconsin is located in the United States
Calamine, Wisconsin
Calamine, Wisconsin
Location in the United States
Country  United States
State  Wisconsin
County Lafayette
Town Willow Springs
Elevation
271 m (889 ft)
Time zone UTC-6 (Central (CST))
 • Summer (DST) UTC-5 (CDT)
Area code(s) 608
GNIS feature ID 1562506

Calamine is an unincorporated community in the town of Willow Springs in Lafayette County, Wisconsin, United States. The Cheese Country Trail runs through the community, as does the Pecatonica River. The community is home to 100 year old St. Michael Church, within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Madison. Next to the church is the Willow Springs township hall which was the former one room school house until 1961, when the new Willow Springs school opened. Many scholars were produced between its walls.

Formerly Calamine was a bustling community with prosperous mines and farms with an active rail road. The rail road was operated by the Milwaukee Road RR and switched at Calamine, either going north to Slateford and Mineral Point or West to Belmont, Ipswich and Platteville. In the 50’s and 60’s large cattle trains would unload Texas cattle in the spring at Calamine and Slateford to be hauled to Kenyon Cattle Company’s pastures. Stores, hotels, blacksmiths, and taverns thrived. For many years local farmers hauled their milk to the Calamine cheese factory to be made into famous Swiss cheese with holes in it. Later the Cornland fertilizer plant was built and supplied farmers for miles around with granular and liguid fertilizer, making the nearby Pecatonica River bottoms top producers in non flood yearsNorth of Calamine there was a popular swimming hole known as the “Mill” on the Pecatonica River named after a prehistoric grist Mill which was burned to the ground during the Blackhawk war. Fourth Cavalry troopers from Fort Defiance were unable to extinguish it and through the procedure somehow discovered this great swimming hole.

Notable people

  • Montgomery Morrison Cothren, Wisconsin legislator and jurist, lived in Calamine.
  • Danverse Neff, Wisconsin legislator, lived in Calamine.
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