Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Mount Horeb, WI

Mount Horeb is a village in Dane County, Wisconsin, about 20 miles southwest of Madison, and part of the Madison metropolitan area.

The village was named in 1861 by its first postmaster, English immigrant and Methodist lay minister George Wright, who searched the Scriptures and chose Mount Horeb — the biblical mountain where Moses received the Ten Commandments — because of the site's high elevation and beauty.

The land that became Mount Horeb was first purchased in 1849, and the community's original business district, known as "The Corners" or "Horeb's Corners," stood a mile east of today's downtown.

When the Chicago and North Western Railway built its depot west of the old settlement in 1881, businesses moved to the tracks, creating the Main Street that defines Mount Horeb today.

Norwegian immigrants shaped Mount Horeb's identity: the first Norwegian settler, Andrew Levordson, arrived in 1871, and Norwegians made up about three-fourths of the local population by 1875.

Mount Horeb bills itself as the "Troll Capital of the World" — its Main Street is nicknamed "The Trollway" and is lined with around 40 carved and painted troll statues, each with its own identity, such as The Chicken Thief and The Accordion Player.

The troll tradition began when a Scandinavian gift shop, Open House Imports, put imported Norwegian trolls on its lawn in the 1970s, and the village leaned into the theme in the 1980s to draw traffic back downtown after the Highway 18/151 bypass was built.

Mount Horeb was formerly home to the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum; in 2009 the collection moved to nearby Middleton, where it now operates as the National Mustard Museum.

The 2020 census counted 7,754 people in Mount Horeb, up from 7,009 in 2010, when the village had 2,696 households.

Mount Horeb sits on the Military Ridge in Wisconsin's unglaciated Driftless Area, near Blue Mound State Park, and offers access points to the 39-mile Military Ridge State Trail for biking and hiking.