1895 Map of Baraboo

About this map

The Baraboo River winds through a landscape of striking relief in this late nineteenth-century survey, passing through the Baraboo townsite and the geological bottleneck of the Baraboo Narrows. To the south, the Wisconsin River creates a natural boundary as it flows past Merrimac and Prairie du Sac. The mapping reflects a period when the Chicago and Northwestern RR was the primary corridor for commerce and travel, linking the established centers of Lodi and Sauk to the rest of the state. Prominent landforms such as Gibraltar Rock and the deep basin of Devils Lake stand out against the agricultural grid of township lines. Smaller settlements like Okee, Alloa, and Farr Corners dot the rural landscape, offering points of interest for those tracing family ties to the pioneer farmsteads and early villages of Sauk, Columbia, and Dane counties.