Mequon, WI USDA Benefits

Mequon (/ˈmɛkwɒn/) is the largest city in Ozaukee County, in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, and the third-largest city in Wisconsin by land area. Located on Lake Michigan’s western shore with significant commercial developments along Interstate 43, the community is a suburb in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Despite being an incorporated city, approximately half of Mequon’s land is undeveloped and agriculture plays a significant role in the local economy. At the time of the 2020 census the population was 25,142.

When the first white settlers arrived in the 1830s, the Mequon area was inhabited by the Menominee, Potawatomi, and Sauk people. In the 1840s, German immigrants settled in the community, building farms and hydropowered mills along the Milwaukee River. Much of the community remained rural, while Thiensville developed as a market town along the local railway, providing services to the farmers. Thiensville incorporated as a village in 1910. Mequon remained rural in the early 20th century but experienced significant population growth during the suburbanization that followed World War II. The community incorporated as a city in 1957 to avoid annexation by the City of Milwaukee. The City of Mequon completely surrounds Thiensville, leading some residents to call Thiensville “Mequon’s donut hole.” The two municipalities have a close relationship, with a shared chamber of commerce, library, and school district.

Lutheranism has played a significant role in Mequon since the community’s early years. Some of the first German settlers were Old Lutherans who founded the Freistadt community—now a neighborhood in western Mequon—in 1839 and went on to form the first Lutheran congregation in Wisconsin. In the 21st century, there are more Lutheran churches in Mequon than churches of any other single denomination. Additionally, Mequon is home to two private Lutheran post-secondary institutions: Concordia University Wisconsin and Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. In addition to having other Christian denominations, Mequon is also the northernmost of Milwaukee’s suburbs to have a sizable Jewish community.

“Mequon” may have come from the Ojibwe word “Emikwaan” or “Miguan”, meaning ladle, referring to the shape of the river in the area. Alternatively, the name may come from a Menominee word Mēkon, meaning “feather.”

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.