Where is Kenosha Wisconsin?

It's on Lake Michigan, between Chicago and Milwaukee.

- Click here for the Wikipedia entry.



Here's some history, I'll post  more on aspects of it separately.

The land was ceded by the Potawatomi in 1833, when they sold the last of their land in Illinois and Wisconsin to the United States. They had hoped to protect their land claims by fighting alongside the US in the Black Hawk War of 1832, but growing poverty forced them to sell in exchange for territory in Iowa and economic investments in schools and agriculture.

The first European settlers, part of the Western Emigration Company, arrived immediately afterward, in the early 1830s, from Hannibal and Troy, New York, led by John Bullen, Jr., who sought to purchase enough land for a town. Thwarted in Milwaukee and Racine, the group arrived at Pike Creek on 6 June 1835, building log houses and later homes of frame, native stone, and brick. The first school and churches followed, with platting completed in 1836. As more settlers arrived and the first post office was established, the village was known as Pike Creek, then renamed Southport in 1837, a name which lives on as a southeast-side neighborhood, park, and elementary school, and has been adopted by several businesses.

The area became an important Great Lakes shipping port. In 1850, another change brought the growing city (and later Kenosha County) its current name, adapted from the Chippewa word kinoje (pike or pickerel).

A prototype steam car was built in Kenosha by the Sullivan-Becker engineering firm in 1900. Two years later, the Thomas B. Jeffery Company, builders of the Sterling bicycle, began production of the Rambler runabout. In 1902, Rambler and Oldsmobile were the first cars to employ mass-production techniques. The 1903 Rambler was also the first US-built production automobile to use a steering wheel, rather than the then-common tiller-controlled steering. Auto executive Charles W. Nash purchased Jeffery in 1916 and the new company became Nash Motors.

Between 1902 and 1988, Kenosha produced millions of automobiles and trucks, including makes and models such as Jeffery, Rambler, Nash, Hudson, LaFayette, and American Motors Corporation (AMC). In May 1954, Nash acquired Detroit-based Hudson and the new firm was named American Motors Corporation.