Almost every town on this list exists because somebody got off a boat. Swiss dairymen, Cornish miners, Norwegian churchgoers, Swedish fishermen, and a family of brothers who happened to run a circus all came to Wisconsin by water, and they built the places their descendants still live in. The lake or the river came first, then the people, then the cheese shop or the winery or the theater. That order is worth keeping in mind, because it explains why these twelve towns feel so different from one another despite sitting in the same state. Each one grew up around a particular shoreline and a particular group of newcomers, and each one kept the thing they made.
Hudson
Hudson grew up as a steamboat port on the steep east bank of the St. Croix River, right at the Minnesota line, and its brick downtown still runs walkable end to end between First and Third Streets. At the bottom of the hill, Lakefront Park lines the river with a sandy beach, an Arts and Crafts bathhouse, and a bandshell where free concerts run on summer evenings. For an indoor evening, the Phipps Center for the Arts still plays a Wurlitzer theater organ, originally built in 1926, to accompany select performances.
The building people remember most is the Octagon House, an eight-sided home built in 1855 and kept the way it looked in the town’s steamboat heyday, with a tended garden and a shop in the old carriage house out back. From there it is a short walk back to the water and St. Croix River Cruises, which run narrated sightseeing trips and dinner cruises past the river islands and sandstone bluffs.