Cool Timeline
1947
Paine Art Center and Arboretum opens to the public
1924
Edgar Sawyer’s home becomes the Oshkosh Public Museum.
1903
The firm that made Oshkosh famous, Oshkosh B’Gosh, was established in 1903, but its iconic name would not appear until 1910.
1883
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Oshkosh was second in population only to Milwaukee. Oshkosh at this time was also the largest city in the Fox River Valley and the construction of the Grand Opera House in 1883 marked the beginning of Wisconsin’s Event City moniker, drawing the nation’s biggest stars in the theater, vaudeville, opera and lecture circuits.
1874
Oshkosh experienced its own fires in 1874 and 1875 that destroyed much of the original downtown. Many of the buildings erected in the reconstruction are still standing today. Following the fires, growth in Oshkosh continued rapidly as the railroad expanded and other industries expanded to take the place of lumber.
1847
In 1847, Morris Firman began operating the first sawmill in Oshkosh and it didn’t take long before sawmills lined the entire Fox River. The arrival of the railroad, the Civil War, and later, the great Chicago fire of 1871, further created a boom in Oshkosh’s lumber trade, as much of the lumber used to rebuild Chicago was produced by Oshkosh sawmills. By 1873, 24 sawmills, 15 shingle mills and seven sash and door companies were in operation and Oshkosh became known as “Sawdust City.”
1836
According to local lore, the area’s first non-Indian settler, Webster Stanley, arrived in the summer of 1836 after migrating from Ohio to start a ferryboat operation. Within several months, he built his home and soon established a trading post, a tavern and an inn. Only three years later, this area had become home to over 100 people. The towns of Brooklyn, located on the south side of the Fox River, and Athens on the north merged and officially adopted the name “Oskosh” and added an ‘h’ sometime later.
1836
The area now known as Oshkosh was first settled by the Menominee nation of Native Americans, including the namesake of the city, Chief Oshkosh, who ceded the area to the United States government in 1836.
1634
Jean Nicolet, sent by the French government in Canada, journeyed the Fox River and Lake Winnebago to locate and make treaties with native tribes. He was probably the first European to pass through this valley.