page_title: McFarland, Wisconsin
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: McFarland, Wisconsin / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking north, a panorama of w:McFarland, Wisconsin on w:U.S. Route 51.
context_page_description: McFarland is a village in Dane County in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. A suburb of Madison, it is part of the Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,808 at the 2010 census. Its ZIP code is 53558. It is the tenth-most populous city in Dane County after Madison.
context_section_description: Several burial mounds from the Woodland period are known as the Lewis Mound Group in the village's Indian Mound Park.
  McFarland was founded in 1856 by William H. McFarland. Early industries in the village included wheat ad tobacco farming, harvesting winter ice and fish on nearby Lake Waubesa for rail shipment to markets in Chicago. Later, a small resort industry developed along the eastern shore of Lake Waubesa, including Edwards Park and Larson's Beach. After World War II, the village became a bedroom community for Madison. In the late 1950s, McFarland annexed the recently constructed petroleum tank farms north of the village, expanding the village's tax base. This allowed the McFarland School District to fund a new high school. In 1989 a major highway project on the nearby Madison highway called the Beltline made commuting to the village much easier and enabled rapid residential growth.
  On June 17, 1992, an F3 tornado destroyed several dozen homes and injured several people in Waubesa Heights, a nearby housing development in the Town of Dunn, in the McFarland School District. At $18.0 million in damage this was the third-costliest tornado in Wisconsin's history behind the Oakfield and Barneveld F5s.
  The village celebrated its sesquicentennial in 2006. Among the festivities were banners on light poles, activities such as the Taste of McFarland, live music at the Gazebo near downtown McFarland and free train rides to Madison. Photo displays of "Then and Now" covering McFarland's 150 years of history were placed at the McFarland High School, the local Culver's restaurant, the E.D. Locke Public Library, and other public locations.
caption: Panorama along U.S. Route 51
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