From early passenger trains at the Waunakee Depot, to the humble beginnings of famous Victorian poetess Ella Wheeler Wilcox, the Waunakee local history photo collection, “Historic Waunkee …in pictures,” has something for everyone. 

Waunakee, Wisconsin does not have a historical society, so most of the known local history collection is housed at the Waunakee Public Library. The library’s first step in digitizing the collection was to scan over 850 photographs that accumulated in the files over the years.  The photographs include two village history slide presentations with detailed captions put together in the 1970's and 1980’s, a village scrapbook, a substantial number of photos from the late 1960’s, and very old family and class photos, many with no captions. Thanks to all of our community members' donations, we now have almost 1700 photos of historic Waunakee in our digital collection.

Do you recognize someone or something in the photos?
Please email waunakeepubliclibrary@gmail.com, call the library at 849-4217, or stop in and tell the librarian what you know. If there is no caption for a photo, it means we do not have information about it.

Do you have historic pictures of Waunakee to add to our digital collection?
Email waunakeepubliclibrary@gmail.com or call the library to set up at time to bring them in. We can scan them while you wait... no need to leave them at the library. And if you bring a flash drive, we can give you the digital files to take home with you!

“Historic Waunkee …in pictures” is hosted by Picasa Web Albums, and may be found at the following link: http://picasaweb.google.com/WaunakeePublicLibrary

More tools for historical research

The Dane County Historical Society recently digitized their delicate early plat maps of Dane County. These maps are great tools to research genealogy and history of the Waunakee area.

Waunakee is located within Westport township.

LIST OF PLAT MAPS:
http://www.danecountyhistory.org/materials/index.html

WESTPORT TOWNSHIP 1861
(note Waunakee was not a village until 1871, but find "LESTER P.O." to see the area that almost became Waunakee, north of present-day Waunakee)

WESTPORT TOWNSHIP 1873
(click top left section to zoom in)

WESTPORT TOWNSHIP 1890

WESTPORT TOWNSHIP 1899