Filmed on Tuesday, August 15 2023, I drive around the village Sparta, WI to see what's going on.
The first recorded settlers in the area were brothers Frank and William Petit, who opened a tavern in 1851. Their mother, recorded only as Mrs. Petit, named the settlement after the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta.
A post office has been in operation at Sparta since 1852.
The settlement grew with the arrival of the La Crosse and Milwaukee Railroad in 1858 and the Chicago and North Western Railroad in 1873. The La Crosse River and area creeks provided water power for early sawmills and gristmills, and the town attracted a variety of small manufacturers in the late nineteenth century.
Residents also promoted Sparta as a health resort after drilling artesian wells for mineral water in the 1860s.
The United States Army began to acquire land for training grounds near Sparta in 1905 and 1909. The training camp developed into Fort McCoy, named for Sparta resident Robert Bruce McCoy.
Sparta is at one end of the Elroy-Sparta State Trail, a 32-mile bike trail that was redeveloped from an abandoned railway and passes through rural scenery and three tunnels. It is part of the larger Wisconsin bike trail system operated by the state of Wisconsin. Based on this, Sparta dubs itself the "Bicycling Capital of America"; the entrance to the town is marked by an oversized sculpture of a bicyclist on an old-fashioned penny farthing high-wheel bicycle.
As of the census of 2020, the population was 10,025.
The racial makeup of the city was 84.5% White, 1.4% Black or African American, 1.0% Asian, 0.9% Native American, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 4.2% from other races, and 7.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race was 11.1% of the population.
The median income for a household in the city was $50,993, and the per capita income for the city was $27,491. 10.8% of the population were below the poverty line.
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