Oostburg, Wisconsin

Oostburg takes its name from a town in the Dutch province of Zeeland, and that is no coincidence. The settlers who arrived in the eighteen forties were Zeelanders, part of a wave of Dutch Reformed immigrants who planted themselves in eastern Wisconsin, near the Lake Michigan shore. Settlement began around eighteen forty, and for decades the community sat slightly east of its present location.

In eighteen seventy-three a local businessman named Peter Daane built and donated a railroad depot to attract the Milwaukee, Lake Shore and Western line. The railroad came, and the village relocated itself to meet it. Within three years, a mill, grain elevator, lumber yard, hotel, and two general stores had all appeared.

The Dutch roots are still visible in the street names and in the annual Holland Fest held in neighboring Cedar Grove.