The Polk post office opened in 1848, the earliest record of the town by name. Three smaller post offices, Cedar Creek (1848), Mayfield (1860) and Ackerville (1870), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
2020 census: 3,988178 years
How historic is Polk?
B
More historic than 57% of U.S. towns, on its age, its old homes and the National Register.
Founding year: the first Polk post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Polk’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Polk is more historic than 57% of U.S. towns, #174 of 362 in Wisconsin. Its age holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
B
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Polk’s overall grade.
Wisconsin towns list more on the Register than most of the country (a typical Wisconsin town has 3.0 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Polk’s 0.0 sits below most of its state (28% of Wisconsin towns have fewer) while its 0 listings outnumber those of 23% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from C+ to B+. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±6.4 points). The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Polk’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
In the early 19th century, Polk was home to Potawatomi Native Americans, who surrendered the land to the United States Federal Government in 1833 through the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which (after being ratified in 1835) required them to leave Wisconsin by 1838. While many Potawatomis moved west of the Mississippi River to Kansas, some chose to remain, and were referred to as "strolling Potawatomi" in contemporary documents because many of them were migrants who subsisted by squatting on their ancestral lands, which were now owned by white settlers. One band of strolling Potawatomi travelled through Dodge, Jefferson, and Washington counties, and was led by Chief Kewaskum, who had a camp on Pike Lake, west of the Polk area. Kewaskum was friendly with the white settlers who began arriving in the 1840s. He died sometime between 1847 and 1850, and the early settlers named the Village of Kewas…
The Polk post office opened in 1848, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Polk rank for history?
Polk is more historic than 57% of U.S. towns, #174 of 362 in Wisconsin. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
How old are the homes in Polk?
16% of Polk’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±6.4 points), against a typical 12% for a Wisconsin town; the median home was built in 1979.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (1), Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
2023
