The Stage Coach to Cooksville – Part 1 by Larry Reed

The Village of Cooksville was on the route of the earliest transportation system in southern Wisconsin — the Territory and the State— in the 1840s to the 1860s.

Back then the long-distance transportation system was, of course, the fabled stagecoach. When the U.S. government opened land in the area for sale in 1837, the population grew rapidly, as did the need for regular routes for transporting mail, goods and people.



The early stagecoach route from Janesville to Madison generally followed what is now U. S. Highway 14, with some deviations. The two- or four-horse coaches carrying passengers and mail stopped after ten or so “stages,” or segments, along the dirt road, picking up more mail and passengers at each stop, and changing horses once, as they traveled the forty-mile distance.

The Janesville-Madison route came very close to Cooksville and, for a time, included Cooksville as a stop. Cooksville’s stagecoach stop, tavern and inn was the Waucoma House, built in 1850. It stood on the northeast corner of Main and Rock streets (now Hwy 59 and Hwy 138). A small, simple pencil sketch of the inn exists, done from memory, showing a large Greek Revival-style building with a columned porch, a typical design of the time.


Hawks Inn, Delafield WI, 1846, looked similar to Waucoma House

A local story about Waucoma House was told as follows: Earl Woodbury was watering his two horses at the tavern’s well probably about 1860; he tied their tails together to keep them at the well and then adjourned to the inn to satisfy his own thirst. Later, after a few too many mugs of refreshment, he remembered wondering if he had the horses securely tied or not, so he apparently staggered out to check on them. When he came to his senses a few hours later, he was safe in bed at home in the village with four hoof marks painted on his body. Undoubtedly, the work of Cooksville jokesters.

Waucoma House, besides serving as tavern and lodging, was also used for various other community purposes such as a dancing school where classes were held every two weeks, taught by a Mr. Brown from Oregon. (Dance classes were eventually moved to the third floor in Mrs. Harrison Stebbins’ home east of Cooksville because she liked dancing so well.) The inn also served as a tailor shop for a brief time. Eventually, as Cooksville declined in population, Waucoma House was no longer needed as a hotel or an inn or, indeed, for any business. It was demolished about 1915.

Early Wisconsin communities were linked together by, and dependent upon, the stage lines. The Janesville-Madison stagecoach— the Frink & Walker Stagecoach Line owned by John Frink and Aaron Walker—operated from about 1840 to 1860. In the first few years, two weekly two-horse stages traveled the route. But soon a four-horse coach made the forty-mile trip daily and as business increased expanded to two coaches each way.

Janesville and Madison were not yet officially villages when the first stagecoaches ran, but they were growing. Janesville in 1842 consisted of two stores, two taverns and about ten dwelling for about 75 inhabitants. Madison was only about twice the size. Both would, of course, develop rapidly in the next ten years.
(To be continued….)