Although Madison became a city 150 years ago, it was hallowed ground to Native Americans for at least 1,500 years before that. Maybe that's why settlers had trouble claiming it.

In 1837 workers arrived to build the capitol. Surveyor Frank Hatheway was tapped to lay out the Capitol Square, but when he tried to use his compass, an unknown force interfered with it. "Repeated trials made with the utmost care, on a north-and-south line," he recalled, "showed that lines run on the same course, as indicated by the needle, crossed each other at every attempt."

After a week of frustration, Hatheway was resigning his commission when "it fortunately happened that a traveler who had stopped at our boarding house for the night, on his way across the country, heard our conversation; at its conclusion, he approached me, and, asking a few questions relative to the work in hand, suggested a mode of operation which at once seemed to remove all difficulties. It would take too much time and space to explain in detail the modus operandi; suffice it to say, that the plan recommended was adopted, and was entirely successful."

Was it a way to compensate for magnetic deviation? To propitiate the sacred spirits of the ancient dead? Simply to make the streets look straight to the naked eye? Hatheway didn't say, and "the next morning, the traveler (whose name I did not learn) resumed his journey, and I never again saw him." Madison has struck observers as slightly out of whack ever since.

- Learn more Madison history at http://www.wisconsin history.org

Odd Wisconsin

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