New Glarus

New Glarus was founded in 1845 by 108 Swiss immigrants from the canton of Glarus, sent over by a Swiss emigration society looking for farmland after a famine, and the town has spent nearly two centuries doubling down on that heritage rather than letting it fade — chalet-style facades, cowbells hung in shop windows, alphorn players occasionally busking on Main Street. Lia grew up near the French-Swiss border and kept stopping mid-sentence, genuinely startled by how convincing the architecture was for a village in the middle of Wisconsin dairy country.

New Glarus Brewing and the hilltop tour

The town’s biggest modern draw is New Glarus Brewing, whose Spotted Cow ale has a cult following so intense in-state that the brewery has chosen never to distribute outside Wisconsin, which means people genuinely plan road trips around it. We toured the hilltop “Hilltop” brewery, a sprawling complex modeled loosely on a Bavarian village, sampling from a rotating lineup while looking out over the valley — Lia, unimpressed by American beer generally, admitted the fruit-forward Wisconsin Belgian Red changed her mind a little.

The Swiss Historical Village

We spent the following morning at the Swiss Historical Village, a cluster of a dozen relocated and reconstructed nineteenth-century buildings — a log cheese factory, a schoolhouse, a settler’s cabin — that trace the founding families’ first brutal winters through to the town’s eventual dairy prosperity. A volunteer guide, herself a descendant of one of the original 108 settlers, walked us through the cheese-making exhibit, explaining how the valley’s limestone-rich soil turned out to be nearly identical to the Swiss Alps’ own pastureland, which is part of why the original settlers chose to stay.

Getting There

Dane County Regional Airport (MSN) in Madison is the closest with commercial service, about 35 minutes northeast. A car is essential; there’s no public transit into the Driftless Area’s small towns.