Mequon

History

The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, including the Menominee, Potawatomi, and Sauk people. In the early 19th century, the Potawatomi had a village in present-day Thiensville located on Pigeon Creek, north of Freistadt Road. In 1832, the Menominee surrendered the land between the Milwaukee River and Lake Michigan to the United States Federal Government through the Treaty of Washington. The Potawatomi surrendered the area of Mequon west of the Milwaukee River in 1833 through the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which (after being ratified in 1835) required them to leave the area by 1838. While many Native people moved west of the Mississippi River to Kansas, some chose to remain, and were referred to as "strolling Potawatomi" in contemporary documents because many of them were migrants who subsisted by squatting on their ancestral lands, which were now owned by white settlers. Eventually the Potawatomi who evaded forced removal gathered in northern Wisconsin, where they formed the Forest County Potawatomi Community. European trappers, explorers, and traders used the Milwaukee River through the middle of what is now Mequon as a means of transportation. The first permanent white settlers arrived in the mid-1830s from New York, England, and Ireland. One of the first settlers was John Weston, who settled near present-day Thiensville in 1837 and served as the first postmaster of the Town of Mequon. One of the oldest surviving buildings from this period is the Isham Day House, constructed in 1839 on the west bank of the river. The first Germans arrived in 1839, and in the 1840s Germans became the largest ethnic group in Mequon and Ozaukee County. In October 1839, a party of twenty German families from Pomerania, Prussia, settled the Freistadt community in the…

Geography

Mequon is located at (43.224243, −87.960094), approximately north of Milwaukee and is part of the Milwaukee metropolitan area. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water. As of 2005, Mequon was the third-largest city in terms of land area in the state of Wisconsin. Though much of the population lives in residential areas, approximately half of the land within the city's boundaries is undeveloped or farmed. The Village of Thiensville is an enclave in central Mequon. The city is also bordered by the Town of Cedarburg, City of Cedarburg, and Town of Grafton to the north; Lake Michigan to the east; the Village of Bayside, Village of River Hills, Village of Brown Deer, and City of Milwaukee to the south; and the Village of Germantown to the west. The city is located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, and the coastline is characterized by clay bluffs ranging from in height with deep ravines where streams flow into the lake. Clay bluffs are a geological formation characteristic of the Lake Michigan shoreline, and are found in few other areas of the world. Much of the coast has mixed gravel and sand beaches. The city is located in the Southeastern Wisconsin glacial till plains that were created by the Wisconsin glaciation during the most recent ice age. The soil is clayey glacial till with a thin layer of loess on the surface. The city has some limestone deposits, including the Devonian Thiensville formation in north-central Mequon and the Silurian Little Menomonee River Reef District, which contains dolomite marine fossils. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources considers the eastern part of the city along the lake to be in the Central Lake Michigan Coastal ecological landscape, while the…

Race & ethnicity

Largest nearby schools

• Homestead High
  High · Mequon · 1,265 students · 17.3:1 ratio
• Cedarburg High
  High · Cedarburg · 1,089 students · 16.5:1 ratio
• Grafton High
  High · Grafton · 715 students · 15.9:1 ratio
• Webster Middle
  Middle · Cedarburg · 645 students · 14.7:1 ratio
• Wilson Elementary
  Elementary · Mequon · 563 students · 14.8:1 ratio
• Thorson Elementary
  Elementary · Cedarburg · 548 students · 15.7:1 ratio
• Oriole Lane Elementary
  Elementary · Mequon · 511 students · 14.6:1 ratio
• Parkview Elementary
  Elementary · Cedarburg · 504 students · 16.3:1 ratio