Jefferson is a city in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. It lies at the confluence of the Rock and Crawfish rivers. The population was 7,793 at the 2020 census. The city is partially bordered by the Town of Jefferson.
History
Jefferson's founders were settlers from New England, part of a wave of New England farmers who headed west into what was then the wilds of the Northwest Territory during the early 1800s. Specifically, on December 18, 1836, three settlers, all of them from Milwaukee, Rodney J. Currier, Andrew Lansing and Capt. Robert Masters, came from Bark Mills (Hebron) and "distributed" themselves about the Jefferson area. Currier and Lansing were the first known settlers in the area as they later erected a log cabin on a claim previously made. Most arrived as a result of the completion of the Erie Canal as well as the end of the Black Hawk War. Jefferson's location was selected to make use of the water power and transportation opportunities offered by the Rock River. It was the furthest point a steamboat could navigate the Rock in 1839. Later bridges built downstream prevented such navigation.
When settlers arrived in what is now Jefferson, they entered a landscape of dense forest and prairie that lay within ancestral Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi territory and near Aztalan, a significant Mississippian-period site attesting to the region’s long Indigenous presence. They built farms, roads, and government buildings and established post routes. They brought many of their Yankee values, such as a passion for education, establishing many schools as well as staunch support for abolitionism. They were mostly members of the Congregationalist Church though some were Episcopalian. Due to the second Great Awakening some had converted to Methodism and others had become Baptists before moving to Jefferson. Like much of Wisconsin, Jefferson would be culturally very continuous with New England culture for most of its early history.
Jefferson was incorporated as a village by an 1857 act of the Wisconsin Legislature and was then incorporated as a city in March 1878.
The Jefferson County Fairgrounds hosted horse buggy racing prior to the renovations to the new fairgrounds.
Gemütlichkeit Days was started in 1971 to celebrate the German heritage of many of the residents of the Jefferson area. The festival was first held under tents in the downtown area. The festival quickly grew and in 1975 the festival was moved to the Jefferson County Fair grounds and has been held there every year since then.
Geography
Jefferson is located at (43.003091, -88.807855).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water.
Jefferson's elevation is at the center of downtown.