Waukesha: The Saratoga of the West

Waukesha County was organized in eighteen forty-six, and its seat, formerly called Prairieville, renamed itself Waukesha from a Native name often linked to foxes. By the eighteen seventies, the city had discovered a second identity entirely: its mineral springs. More than two hundred spring water companies operated here during the Springs Era from eighteen sixty-eight to nineteen fourteen, and the town filled with resort hotels catering to visitors who arrived by rail from Chicago and Milwaukee seeking what promoters called the healing waters.

Waukesha became known as the Saratoga of the West. The springs era faded, but the county grew into one of the fastest-developing suburban landscapes in Wisconsin.