9 Unforgettable Small Towns to Visit in Wisconsin

Stockholm holds just 78 residents on a single bend of Lake Pepin, a village turned almost entirely over to pie counters and artist studios. The other eight Wisconsin towns ahead run on the same principle of outsized history in a small place: New Glarus stages a Friedrich Schiller play in German every Labor Day, Baraboo still holds the original Ringling circus winter quarters, and Washington Island sits an hour's ferry ride past the strait the French named Death's Door. Swiss, Swedish, Icelandic, and circus roots turn up in the architecture, the breweries, and the festival calendars. None of these places moves quickly, and across the nine, that is the shared appeal.

Stockholm

The Stockholm Pie & General Store on Spring Street does enough business in a village of 78 people to draw a weekend line out the door. That population, recorded at the 2020 census, makes Stockholm one of the smallest incorporated villages in Wisconsin. Swedish immigrants from Karlskoga founded it in 1854 and named it for their own capital, and the storefronts now hold mostly studios, galleries, and bakeries. The village sits on Lake Pepin, the largest natural lake on the Mississippi River, a roughly 21-mile pool the current spreads between Wisconsin and Minnesota. Just north, the Maiden Rock Bluff State Natural Area climbs to the top of a 400-foot limestone bluff with a long view down the water. Stockholm Village Park keeps a small lakeshore campground with direct lake access.

New Glarus

New Glarus Brewing Company sells its Spotted Cow farmhouse ale only inside Wisconsin, part of how it has become the largest craft brewery in the state. The town around it was settled in 1845 by 108 Swiss immigrants from the Canton of Glarus in eastern Switzerland, and it still runs as the most concentrated Swiss-American community in the country, down to the chalet fronts along Main Street. The Swiss Historical Village & Museum lays out 14 reconstructed pioneer buildings on a hillside, tracing the immigrant generation's frontier life. Every Labor Day weekend the town stages Friedrich Schiller's Wilhelm Tell as an outdoor production, alternating performances in English and German. For a quieter day, the Sugar River State Trail runs 24 miles along a former rail corridor to Brodhead.

Baraboo

Devil's Lake State Park, the most-visited state park in Wisconsin, wraps a 360-acre spring-fed lake inside 500-foot quartzite bluffs across its 9,217 acres just south of Baraboo. The town itself spent decades as the winter home of the Ringling Brothers Circus, which quartered here from 1884 to 1918, and five of the original seven Ringling brothers grew up in Baraboo. That original winter-quarters site survives on Water Street as Circus World, a National Historic Landmark holding the largest collection of circus artifacts anywhere, alongside antique wagons and live performances. South of town, the Aldo Leopold Foundation preserves the shack and land that shaped Leopold's 1949 "A Sand County Almanac," one of the founding texts of modern conservation. North of Baraboo, the International Crane Foundation is the only place on earth where all 15 of the world's crane species can be seen.

Lake Geneva

In Lake Geneva, the Cruise Line still runs summer mailboats whose "mail jumpers" leap from the moving boat onto private piers to deliver the post, one of the last marine mail routes in the country. The resort town behind that tradition goes back to the 1870s, when Chicago industrialists began building lakeshore estates here. Many of those mansions are still visible from the 21-mile Geneva Lake Shore Path, a public walkway that has circled the water since the same decade. The 1888 Black Point Estate & Gardens, a preserved Victorian lakeshore mansion reachable by boat, now operates as a Wisconsin Historical Society site. For a faster afternoon, Lake Geneva Ziplines & Adventures runs canopy tours and high-ropes courses across a 100-acre wooded park.

Chippewa Falls

Irvine Park & Zoo gives Chippewa Falls a free 300-plus-acre municipal park with a small zoo of bison, elk, and cougars, plus a petting area, all at no admission. The town's longer fame belongs to Leinenkugel's, founded on the Chippewa River in 1867 and counted as the seventh-oldest brewery in the United States. Molson Coors moved Leinenkugel's main production to Milwaukee in January 2025, but the Leinie Lodge and its on-site pilot brewery stay open in town, and tours of the historic brewery still run. Lake Wissota State Park, just north, surrounds a 6,300-acre reservoir on the Chippewa River with swimming, boating, and a year-round campground. Downtown, the Cook-Rutledge Mansion preserves the High Victorian Italianate interiors of an 1873 lumber-baron home, open for seasonal tours. The 20-mile Old Abe State Trail follows a former Soo Line corridor north to Cornell.

Sister Bay

The goats grazing on the sod roof of Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant on Bay Shore Drive are probably the most-photographed roadside sight in Door County, and they live up there from late May into October. Al Johnson's anchors Sister Bay, the town at the north end of the Door County peninsula on the Green Bay side. Its downtown bends around a small public beach and Marina Park, and Sister Bay Beach ranks among the warmer swimming spots on the Door County shore. Just outside town, the Door County Creamery makes artisan goat cheese and runs seasonal tours of its working farm. The Corner of the Past Museum collects three relocated 19th-century buildings, including a one-room schoolhouse and a settler's log cabin.

Port Washington

Port Washington promotes its July Fish Day as the world's largest one-day outdoor fish fry, a claim that pulls more than 100,000 people to the harbor each summer. The town sits on Lake Michigan as the seat of Ozaukee County, and its lakefront identity centers on the 1860 Light Station, a wood-frame keeper's house, and the working pierhead light at the harbor mouth. The marina also hosts a Maritime Heritage Festival each September. Upper Lake Park spreads 67 acres of bluff-top green with views over the harbor, while Coal Dock Park reworks the old coal-loading pier into a public fishing and event space along the south waterfront. The 1882 St. Mary's Church on Johnson Street is among the most-photographed churches in eastern Wisconsin.

Stevens Point

The 27-mile Green Circle Trail loops Stevens Point through downtown, the Wisconsin and Plover River greenways, and the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point campus. The university and the Stevens Point Brewery have anchored the town for generations; the brewery dates to 1857, making it the third-oldest privately owned brewery in the country. North of downtown, the Stevens Point Sculpture Park scatters more than 30 large-scale works across a 25-acre wooded site. Mathias Mitchell Public Square hosts a Saturday farmers market from May through October, one of the oldest continuously running markets in Wisconsin. On campus, the UWSP Museum of Natural History keeps free natural-history exhibits and a planetarium.

Washington Island

Schoolhouse Beach is one of only a few beaches in the world surfaced entirely in smooth white limestone cobbles instead of sand, and removing the stones is prohibited. The beach sits on Washington Island, seven miles off the tip of the Door County peninsula across the strait the French called Porte des Morts, or Death's Door, reached by year-round ferry from Northport Pier. Icelandic immigrants settled the island in the 1850s, founding what is now the oldest Icelandic-American community in the country. Along a wooded path stands the Washington Island Stavkirke, a 1995 replica of a 12th-century Norwegian stave church. The Mountain Park observation tower at the island's high point opens views across Green Bay and Lake Michigan, and the Jacobsen Museum at Little Lake holds the island's Scandinavian settler furnishings.

What Runs Through These Nine Towns

The thread across all nine is immigrant memory kept deliberately alive. Stockholm and Washington Island hold the Swedish and Icelandic settlements, and New Glarus keeps the Swiss one down to the language of its Labor Day play. Baraboo and Lake Geneva trade on circus and Gilded Age resort histories that still draw crowds. Chippewa Falls and Stevens Point built their identities around 19th-century breweries that are still standing, if not all still brewing. Sister Bay and Port Washington carry the Door County and Lake Michigan waterfront traditions. None of them is large, and each has decided that its own history is the reason to stay that way.