This week in Watertown
Nothing on Watertown’s calendar for the next two weeks yet.
About Watertown
Watertown began in 1836, when Timothy Johnson built a cabin on the west bank of the Rock River, which drops about 20 feet as it bends through town and once ran its sawmills. Settlers from New England came first, and German families followed in the 1850s; the city was chartered in 1853, the year a plank road reached it from Milwaukee. In 1856 Margarethe Schurz started the first kindergarten in the United States here, and its little building now stands beside the five-story brick Octagon House, finished in 1854. Today families stroll the River Walk downtown, tour the Octagon House in summer, and turn out for Riverfest, Pumpkin Palooza and the Christmas Parade of Lights.