3156 S Riverside Dr · Beloit, Wisconsin
Once upon a house — and every word of it on the record.
One piece of land beside the Rock River: the Ho-Chunk village of Standing Post, the trader Joseph Thibault, the Blodgetts who founded Beloit, William S. Yost's farm and cobblestone house, the Yost Park resort, and the Riverside Motel built around it. Every event below links to the page of the source that records it.
The land through time
…–1835
The first people
The Ho-Chunk village of Standing Post beside the Rock River.
"Indian Manufactures": a canoe, tools and garments of the upper Great Lakes nations, engraved for Schoolcraft's journal of 1821. Not specific to the Ho-Chunk. Source
Schoolcraft, Henry R. Narrative Journal of Travels through the Northwestern Regions of the United States, Extending from Detroit through the Great Chain of American Lakes, to the Sources of the Mississippi River, Performed as a Member of the Expedition under Governor Cass, in the Year 1820. Albany: E. & E. Hosford, 1821. Library of Congress copy via the Internet Archive, archive.org/details/narrativejournal01scho.1634–1836
Contact and the fur trade
French, British and American traders; Joseph Thibault.
Sault de Ste. Marie, engraved for Schoolcraft's account of the 1820 Cass expedition through the fur-trade country. Source
Schoolcraft, Henry R. Narrative Journal of Travels through the Northwestern Regions of the United States, Extending from Detroit through the Great Chain of American Lakes, to the Sources of the Mississippi River, Performed as a Member of the Expedition under Governor Cass, in the Year 1820. Albany: E. & E. Hosford, 1821. Library of Congress copy via the Internet Archive, archive.org/details/narrativejournal01scho.1836–1843
The Blodgetts
Caleb Blodgett buys Thibault's claim; Selvey K. Blodgett farms the land.
"A Map of Beloit": the early village beside the Rock River, reproduced in Brown's Rock County, Wisconsin (1908). 1843–1897
The Yost farm
William S. Yost settles, farms and builds the cobblestone house.
"Wm. S. Yost" on the 1858 map of Beloit Township, Sections 11 and 12. 1898–1930
Yost Park
The riverside resort: picnics, dances and the interurban.
"Yost Park" lettered by the river on the 1904 plat, beside John A. Yost's Park Stock Farm.
1834
The property
Rock County
The region
- 1834 Government Surveyors described the Winnebago village site of Tay-e-hee-dah as the "ruins of an old Indian village."
- 1834 By 1834, 4,591 Winnebagoes had settled north of the Wisconsin river, unwilling to cross the Mississippi to their new Iowa reservation.
- September 6, 1834 The legislative council of Michigan Territory created Milwaukee county out of the southern portion of Brown county; the village of Milwaukee was made the county seat.
- September 6, 1834 The legislative council of Michigan Territory divided the Iowa district into the counties of Des Moines and Dubuque.
Nation and world
- June 26, 1834 Congress approved an act creating additional land districts, establishing the Wisconsin and Green Bay land districts in the Territory of Michigan.
- June 28, 1834 Congress attached the country west of the Mississippi river and north of the State of Missouri to the Territory of Michigan for temporary judicial purposes.
- 1834 Congress greatly increased the limits of the Territory of Michigan for judicial purposes by adding a large extent of country west of the Mississippi.
- 1834 The pre-emption law was revived for two years, extending only to those who had made cultivation in 1833.
Faces from the record
Engraved portraits from the county histories of 1879 and 1908. A different dozen each day.
