Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Chilton, WI

Chilton is a city in east-central Wisconsin and the county seat of Calumet County, located in the rolling dairy country east of Lake Winnebago.

Chilton's first residents were Moses Stanton, a formerly enslaved African American man, and his Native American wife Catherine, who arrived in January 1845 and built a sawmill and gristmill around which the city formed.

The settlement was first called Stantonville; new owner John Marygold renamed it "Chilington" after Chillington Hall in England in 1852, but a clerk accidentally dropped the middle syllable and the town was recorded as Chilton.

Chilton became the Calumet County seat in December 1853, when the county's first courthouse was built there, taking the seat away from Stockbridge.

The 2020 census counted 4,080 people in Chilton, up from 3,933 in 2010, and most of the city's 19th-century settlers were of German heritage.

Chilton hosts the Calumet County Fair at its fairgrounds every Labor Day weekend, an event billed for years as "The Biggest Little Fair in Wisconsin."

Chilton annexed the neighboring community of Gravesville in the late twentieth century; founded in 1849, Gravesville once had over 400 residents and unsuccessfully competed with Chilton to become the county seat.

Morrissey Park, built largely by community volunteers on the grounds of the former Chilton High School, carries a bird theme inspired by Chilton-based Kaytee Products and its Kaytee Avian Education Center.

Students in the city attend Chilton High School, home to the Engler Center for the Performing Arts, and the Chilton Public School District.

Calumet County itself takes its name from the French word for the ceremonial pipes Native Americans smoked in councils along the east shore of Lake Winnebago.