Some Thoughts on Driving in Wisconsin
The Badger State’s road culture offers an unusually large number of inconspicuous pleasures for the detail-attentive motorist.
My girlfriend E and I spent a few days last week tooling around south-central Wisconsin. We visited a bunch of cool attractions and enjoyed various aspects of Wisconsin life (taverns, supper clubs, a Friday fish fry, bratwurst, etc.), but I’ll save those stories for another time. This post is specifically about the experience of driving in Wisconsin, because the Badger State has an unusually rich roadway culture, with lots of inconspicuous pleasures for the detail-attentive motorist.
One such detail, as you may recall from my essay a few months ago about state welcome signs, is that Wisconsin goes all-out to greet visitors crossing the state line, with nearly two dozen signs like the one shown above (additional info here). As for the other things awaiting drivers in America’s Dairyland, here are 10 road-related details that caught our eye during last week’s trip. Some of them are things I’ve known about for many years, while others were new to me, but all are worth a closer look, so let’s get started.
1. Town Signs with Population Counts
One of my favorite things about driving in Wisconsin is that when you cross the border into a new municipality, you’ll be greeted by a sign showing the burg’s name and population, based on the most recent U.S. census. This holds true throughout the state, from the biggest city to the smallest hamlet (unless the town is unincorporated).
A few other states also list populations on their town and city signs, but can we all agree that every state should do this? As an enthusiastic road-tripper, I find it so useful and interesting to know the population when I’m entering a town. Well done, Wisconsin!
2. Historical Marker Turnouts
Here’s another thing that other states could learn from: Many of Wisconsin’s 615 historical markers are located on roadside turnouts like the one shown above, so you can pull over and take a look without blocking traffic. Even better, there’s usually a sign providing a bit of advance warning prior to the turnout (“Historical Marker 1/2 Mile Ahead”), so you can slow down if you want, instead of just buzzing past the marker before you even realized it was there (a huge problem in my own state of New York, sadly). Well done again, Wisconsin!
As for the marker shown above (one of several that we visited during last week’s trip), here’s a better look at what it’s commemorating:

3. State Highway Signs
Wisconsin state highway routes are marked by signs that I originally thought were stylized shields (like the shields used for U.S. highway routes). But when E saw them, she said the design looked like a triangle overlaying a round-cornered rectangle. I saw what she meant, but I insisted that the two notches at the top of the design were just that — notches — because the lines and angles didn’t quite align to create a true triangle. Who was right? Here’s the state’s official highway sign template on the left, with an annotated version on the right:
As I suspected, the angles of the notches at the top do not align with the point at the bottom — a maddening inconsistency that I’d never noticed before. It bugged the fuck out of me for the rest of our trip.
But wait — it turns out that the signs used to have a true triangle back in the 1940s and ’50s (this sign is a reproduction, but it matches the vintage specs):
But wait again, it gets better! Back in the 1920s, the design was just a triangle:

So how did they go from that to the current design? Here’s a handy chart that shows how the sign format has evolved over the years:

But there’s one state highway whose signs look a bit different. Which leads us to…