History

Solar energy is cheaper, more efficient and more widely available than ever, but its viability was never assured. Technologies that enable the conversion of sunlight into usable electricity are the products of an uncoordinated, decades-long series of events that followed a circuitous and halting path
WisContext is focused on the long haul. Examining how Wisconsin's history shapes its contemporary issues and looking forward at how these trends may develop was a consistent element of our coverage in 2019.
Before the widespread availability of electricity allowed Americans to cool food with the flip of a switch, they relied on iceboxes.
Hardly more than a century ago, deer were not to be found across broad swaths of southern and eastern parts of Wisconsin, with their dwindling ranks limited to its northern stretches after decades of mass hunts for hide and meat markets in the latter half of the 1800s.
In 1989, a long simmering conflict over American Indian treaty rights helped prompt a landmark educational law in Wisconsin.
The connection between Wisconsin's rivers and the wetlands that feed them has become increasingly tenuous. Its consequences for human communities come into clearer focus when heavy rains transform streams and rivers into forces of wanton destruction.
The vast majority of what happens under the surface of lakes goes unrecorded, meaning potentially important ecological stories are often lost to history.
Jews living in prosperous small-town communities in the mid-20th century saw large population declines over several decades as the next generation favored the opportunities that larger cities presented.
Wisconsin's self-proclaimed moniker as "America's Dairyland" is taking on fresh meaning in the 21st century thanks to a growing market for milk from an animal that bleats rather than moos.
Technological changes — electricity and mechanization — in the mid-20th century would revolutionize the practice and business of agriculture in Wisconsin, and set into motion economic and demographic changes that continue well into the 21st century.