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    Octagon House

    3.8 (4 reviews)

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    7 years ago

    Very educational...learned alot from our guide. The other buildings were kept clean and easy to see things..

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    8 years ago

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    Aztalan Museum - interior, old Aztalan schoolhouse

    Aztalan Museum

    (2 reviews)

    Let's start with a couple of housekeeping items that you need to know about. This is NOT the…read moreprehistoric Native American community of Aztalan. That state park is about a mile and a half south on County Highway Q. This museum is on the site of what is called Pioneer Aztalan, located on the southeast corner formed by County Highways B and Q. At one time, these roads were major routes, CTH B was the Milwaukee-Mineral Point territorial road. About 1918, it became Wisconsin 30 which was eventually replaced by I-94. CTH Q was the Fond du Lac-Janesville road that was eventually replaced by Wisconsin 26. (See Christopher Bessert's excellent "Wisconsin Highways" website for more about these roads. http://www.wisconsinhighways.org/index.html) Being on this important crossroads, by 1850, Aztalan had grown to become one of the most important towns in Jefferson County. It was the site of the first post office in the county, two blacksmiths, a shoe shop, two stores, a quarry, a sawmill, and a church. When the railroads came through and bypassed Aztalan, it became mostly a ghost town. The church is the only original Pioneer Aztalan building extant. In 1941, the Lake Mills Aztalan Historical Society was formed to preserve the heritage of the Pioneer Aztalan property, that borders the prehistoric Aztalan Native American state park. The restored church is the society's museum with an amazing collection of artifacts from 19th Century Wisconsin life. The society located other historic structures in the area and moved them to the site, including a Moravian church, the one-room John Petty Family log cabin (donated by a descendant of the Petty family) the Zickert log home (moved during the construction of I-94) and a granary that models a 19th Century wood wright's shop. (A house on the property is not considered a historic structure.) The society later purchased the one-room schoolhouse across the road - don't miss it! The school was built in 1917 to replace one that burned down, and it appears as it would have in the 1940s. It was used as a school until the 1950s. The Pioneer Aztalan site became a Wisconsin landmark in 1969 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The Princess Mound on the grounds is a Native American burial mound, circa 1200. It is one of the thousands of mounds cataloged by Dr. Increase Lapham. The princess is not there, she was exhumed and moved to Milwaukee for preservation, research and security. The mound is considerably lower than its original six foot height, the soil was probably used for fill in the 19th Century. This is a can't-miss visit to see what life was really like around the time Wisconsin became the 30th state on May 29, 1848. Of all the small, volunteer operated museums in Wisconsin, this is one of the outstanding ones, with an amazing collection, and well worth your time to visit. It's open from Mid-May to the end of September every year, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays Noon to 4 PM. Cash only, no plastic money accepted for a nominal admission fee. It's easily reached from Johnson Creek on the east and Lake Mills on the west. Just follow the signs on CTH B. Don't miss this one.

    Small museum funded and operated by a private society with exhibits pertaining to the Aztalan State…read morePark Native American mound building society just to the south of the museum, and to life in the now-defunct pioneer village of Aztalan, which existed from around 1840 to the 1900s but has now completely disappeared except for a couple of old buildings maintained by the museum. Some nice exhibits of Native American artifacts, and some nice period pieces from the pioneer village. Some nice rebuilt actual log cabins of the time, old small log cabin Moravian Church built by the German settlers in 1861, old one room schoolhouse. Admission is $5, open Thursday-Sunday 12noon-4pm starting about the middle of May through September. If you are planning a visit in late September, be sure to call ahead, as their last day this year was 9/28/2014. They don't take credit cards, so have cash on hand for the admission fee. If you are interested in Native American mound building culture, they have some copies for sale of "Aztalan: Mysteries of an Ancient Indian Town" by Robert Birmingham and Lynne Goldstein, which does a nice job of describing the site and relating it to the Cahokia site near East St. Louis. A visit here nicely compliments a visit to the Aztalan State Park just to south of the museum. Website: www.orgsites.com/wi/aztalan/index.html

    Octagon House - museums - Updated May 2026

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