GOP U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman says the national landmark status for the Little White Schoolhouse in Ripon, known as the birthplace of the Republican Party, remains intact despite previous notifications from the federal government that it was lost.
“The update from the National Park Service is really kind of very different from what we were informed a few years ago,” the 6th CD congressman told WISN 12’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics-State Affairs. “A few years ago, we were informed that if the Little White Schoolhouse moved, we’d have to reapply and go through bureaucratic hoops to be a National Historic Landmark.”
The schoolhouse moved to a new location in Ripon in 2023.
“Withdrawal of National Historic Landmark status occurs only at the request of the owner or upon the initiative of the Secretary of the Interior,” reads a letter to Grothman from the U.S. Department of the Interior. “No such request or action has been taken; accordingly, the site retains its designation as a National Historic Landmark and remains administratively listed in the National Register.”
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“The letters we got from the National Park Service several years ago are kind of contradictory to the letter we got this week,” Grothman said. “But we wound up where we wanted to be, so we’re not going to shake the bureaucracy anymore.”
Chris Kolakowski, the chair of Wisconsin’s America 250 commission, says celebrations will continue across the state through the end of the year.
“State Fair is going to have elements of the 250th,” Kolakowski told “UpFront.” “Summerfest obviously is going to have elements. We’re looking already to how do we make America 250 and the 25th of 9/11 this September, Veterans Day? The commission goes through Jan. 1st of next year.”
Kolakowski said the commission has spent the past several years preparing for the celebrations, including both in Wisconsin and across the country.
That includes the burying of a time capsule in Philadelphia that will be opened on the nation’s 500th birthday. Kolakowski said there were very strict parameters about what could be put in the time capsule, including that each state was limited to what could fit into a container roughly the size of two cereal boxes stacked on top of each other.
“So what we ended up doing was letters from the senior, the elected officials of the state, and then we put in some mementos from our native nations and then a feather from Old Abe, the famous war eagle of the 8th Wisconsin from the Civil War, who was an enduring state symbol for Wisconsin but also was the star of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876,” Kolakowski said. “So it was just a neat tie to 1876 to 2026 and then obviously the 500th birthday.”
