Did you know that back when Wisconsin was just a few years old we set aside the very first state-owned land to create a state park?
In the late 1800s, Wisconsin was mostly a vast swath of forest. Most of the population lived in the southern part of the state and many viewed the northern part of the state as useless wilderness - not good for cities, farming or luring people to come here.
So in 1878 the state legislature established the first ever US state park and they creatively called it "The State Park." It was 58,000 acres in what is now Iron and Vilas counties.
Flickr/Joshua Mayer
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There was just one small problem - despite naming the area a state park, it turns out the state only owned about 10% of that land.
Just 19 years after the country's first state park was established, legislature dissolved it and sold the land to the lumber companies, defeating the purpose of protecting those lands in the first place.
So though it no longer exists, Wisconsin can lay claim to America's very first state park. Despite the unfortunate loss to logging, the state has spent the past century protecting our natural resources and providing land for public use.
