Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Monona, WI

Monona is a small city in Dane County on the southeastern shore of Lake Monona, the lake it is named for, and it is almost entirely surrounded by the city of Madison.

Monona was incorporated as a village on August 29, 1938 — in the back of Ernie's Trading Post — after residents of the Town of Blooming Grove grew frustrated with the lack of services, and it became a city in 1969.

Before incorporation the area was mostly farmland and summer cottages, and in the 1950s the village exploded from 2,544 to 8,178 residents, a 231 percent jump that was the largest percentage increase of any community in Wisconsin that decade.

The 2020 census counted 8,624 people in Monona, packed into just 3.35 square miles, and because Madison and the lake hem it in on every side the city is completely landlocked.

The Ho-Chunk people lived along Lake Monona for centuries, using the area as a home, trading post and meeting ground long before European-American settlement.

A Native American burial mound known as the Outlet Mound, built roughly 1,500 years ago, was accidentally cut into during street construction in the 1940s in what state historians called one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made in southern Wisconsin.

Soul singer Otis Redding died on December 10, 1967, when his Beechcraft airplane crashed into Lake Monona just off Monona's Tonyawatha Trail shoreline on approach to Madison; only his trumpeter, Ben Cauley, survived.

Monona Grove High School, opened in 1955 on Monona Drive, is home to the Silver Eagles, whose football team won Wisconsin state championships in 1977, 1984 and 2013.

The Aldo Leopold Nature Center, founded in 1994 and named for the famed Wisconsin conservationist, offers trails through restored prairie, marsh and basswood forest on about 21 acres next to Woodland Park and the Edna Taylor Conservation Park.

Winnequah Park is Monona's signature community park, known for its lagoon, fishing pond and the Dream Park, a large wooden playground guarded by wizard and water dragon sculptures.