Wisconsin is home to nearly 650 state historical markers – those fancy brown, aluminum signs graced with cream-colored serif, staples in front of old buildings and on road trips planned by documentary-loving dads. Located in almost every county (check out an interactive map of them here), the markers commemorate important people, places and events in Badger State lore – everything from Laura Ingalls Wilder to the state’s first African-American church to the World’s Largest Penny.
So, we were wondering: Who writes these things?
Unfortunately, there is no official marker writer who spends every daylight hour poring over historical records in a basement somewhere. Instead, it’s a collaborative process between the Wisconsin Historical Society and the person or organization that proposed the marker. Anyone (who can pay the $250 application fee) can apply for a Wisconsin state historical marker. (The marker itself can run applicants between $850 and over $7,000, depending on its size). To be approved, markers must meet certain criteria set forth by the historical society.
In the application form, you’re required to submit your marker’s proposed narrative text. In other words, the bulk of the writing falls on applicants, though historical society staff provide editing and feedback.
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Brian Finstad, president of the Gordon-Wascott Historical Society in Douglas County, joined the historical marker writers’ club earlier this summer when the Amick Settlement marker he proposed was installed in Gordon, about 110 miles north of Eau Claire. From proposal to installation, Finstad says, the entire process took more than two years. It began when he and the former GWHS president compiled a narrative on the lives of town founders Antoine and Sarah Gordon and submitted it for marker consideration.
Given the absence of a designated marker writer, you might wonder what stops nefarious or uninformed actors from passing off whatever they want as important state history. The answer is a near-history-major-thesis level of research.
Applicants must submit an extensive annotated bibliography – complete with footnotes and photocopies of all research sources. “Ideally, we would like to see an endnote and supporting document attached to every sentence, date and name in your written text,” the historical society advises.
Finstad’s first draft focused on facts about the Gordons’ lives and their journey to establish a home and trading post in 1858 at the site where the marker now stands. The historical society sent the draft back. “They thought that our facts and stats weren’t as relevant as how the Gordons fit into overarching themes of history that shaped the state,” Finstad explains.
The Gordons were Métis people, a cultural group of mixed French and Native American ancestry that bridged relationships between Native tribes and Europeans during Wisconsin’s fur trade era. After additional research and numerous back-and-forth drafts and emails with the historical society team, Finstad’s marker evolved into one describing the Métis’ role in early Gordon.
“We realized that the settlement that became our town wasn’t just Antoine and Sarah. … It was a uniquely Métis settlement for the first 30 years,” Finstad says. “The title of the marker changed from ‘Antoine and Sarah Gordon’ to ‘Amick Settlement.’” Amick, Ojibwe for beaver, was the community’s name before it became Gordon a few decades later.
Although the writing process involved the aforementioned hours of digging through primary sources, Finstad – a self-described “lifelong history geek” – says the hardest part was actually staying within the required word limit, which varies greatly depending on your marker’s size. The most compact option, the “Small City Marker,” caps at 320 characters – in the ballpark of an old-school tweet – while the 6-foot by 4½-foot “Two-Post Marker” has a character limit of 2,006, or a bit less than the first six paragraphs of this story.
“Even though we had the largest possible (marker), it was difficult because our topic is so complex – it’s talking about two people, but also the place they established, why they established it there and the cultural relevance of the Métis people. We got the word count down, though, and it’s better for it. If it was longer, people might lose interest.”
Other than word count, the historical society has a few more requirements for marker inscriptions. First, you can’t use superlatives like “first,” “oldest,” “biggest” or “only,” unless there’s “irrefutable documentation” that your historical honoree actually is whatever you’re claiming it to be. Second, you can’t include the name of any living person in your text. And at the end of the day, the historical society reserves the right to edit any text applicants submit and can reject any marker that it deems offensive or doesn’t meet its criteria.
Still, you’re not out of luck if all these requirements make you realize, “Hey, maybe I’m not much of a writer.” You can include a photo, map or graphic on your marker for a few hundred dollars more, reducing the amount of necessary text — and well-researched writing that goes along with it.
