Business View Magazine | September 2020

332 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2020 T he City of Watertown, Wisconsin is located in the southeastern part of the Badger State, midway between Milwaukee and Madison. A friendly, hard-working city, surrounded by lush forests and beautiful farmland, Watertown offers a small-town culture with big-city amenities, and a lifestyle that’s a little bit slower-paced, a little bit more affordable, and a positive energy, all its own. The Rock River, a tributary of the mighty Mississippi and known by the Sauk and Fox Indians as “Sinnissippi,” meaning “rocky waters,” runs through the city, and the area was initially settled to utilize the power of the river, first for sawmills and later for hydroelectricity. In the 1850s, middle-class, German immigrants, fleeing from political turmoil in Germany, immigrated to Watertown and were welcomed by the descendants of its original Yankee population. For most of the 19th century, these two groups fostered the city’s commerce, industry, arts, and education. In fact, the first kindergarten in the United States was founded in Watertown in 1856 by Margarethe Schurz, wife of statesman Carl Schurz; the building that housed this kindergarten is now located on the grounds of the city’s Octagon House Museum. Today, Watertown has a population of approximately 24,000, many of whom work for some of the city’s light manufacturing firms, including: Eaton Corporation, a global technology leader in power management solutions; Wisconsin Invest Cast, which provides investment metal casting products; Baker- A POSITIVE ENERGY OWN sconsin ,