Built in 1836 (Boom Town style). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
From the record
“First Capitol Historic Site is a free-admission historic museum located outside Belmont, Wisconsin, United States. The museum includes two of the buildings first used by legislators to meet in Wisconsin Territory.”
Wikipedia article First Capitol Historic Site, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 13 National Register listings published here for Lafayette County · listed in 1970 · category: Building · built in 1836, Boom Town style.
National Register reference number.70000036- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
5 since 2018
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 5 fires within 5 miles of First Capitol
between 2018 and 2020, burning about 1 acre in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
4
Equipment and vehicle use
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
32 workings within 5 miles of First Capitol: 19 past producers, 7 unknowns, 3 prospects, 2 producers.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Lead, Zinc, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Lead, Zinc. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Belmont, the town this property stands in, in 40 storm reports between 1997 and 2025: 19 thunderstorm wind, 14 hail, 2 tornado, 2 flash flood.
The reports record 1 injury. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A tornado spun up 5.0 miles southwest of the village Belmont (Lafayette Co.), near the intersection of Pine Tree and Field Drive, and proceeded to track northeast to near Belmont before dissipating 2.7 miles northeast of Belmont (just southeast of the intersection of Cottage Inn Road and Bethel Grove Rd). Just east of Belmont, the tornado destroyed a farm's mobile home, injuring one of five people inside. In addition, a pole shed on this farm was damaged. On two other farms, this tornado inflicted minor to extensive damage on homes, barns, wind mills, and decks. Law enforcement officials video taped this tornado; estimated at the top end of F1 (about 110 mph).
A 5-mile wide hail swath damaged crops (corn, soy beans, wheat, and alfalfa), vehicles (windows and dents), and at least 25 homes (windows, siding, and roofs). This hail swath merged with a another, later, hail swath, with the merger southeast of Shullsburg. Some fields southeast of Shullsburg were totally stripped by the hail stones.||Newspaper accounts indicated that the two hail swaths resulted in damage to 20,000 acres of corn and 10,000 acres of soybeans in Lafayette County. Using an avarge of 135 bushes of corn per acre with a price of $3.45 per bushels yields a corn loss of $9.315 M. Using an average of 38 bushels of soybeans per acre, and a price of $9.25 per bushel yields a soybean loss of $3.515 M. These loss estimates were divided by two and assigned to the two hail swaths equally.
Law enforcement reported damage in a 15-mile wide swath from southwest of Belmont to Woodford from thunderstorm wind gusts estimated at 75 mph (65 knots). Downed trees blocked roads and fallen power lines caused power outages in the towns of Belmont, Argyle and Darlington. Six homes were damaged, and a 100-year-old 38 foot by 100 foot barn was flattened on a farm near Argyle, damaging a tractor inside.
Heavy rains from severe thunderstorms produced flash flooding that washed out the gravel shoulders of roads in and near Belmont in Lafayette County. Damage due to the flash flooding totaled $30,000. Rainfall estimates from National Weather Service radar totaled 2 to 3 inches during this time.
Tornado filmed by multiple storm chasers and mainly went through farmland. One barn was hit and lost sheet metal on the roof. Tree damage was noted as well.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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