Butte des Morts, WI

Butte des Morts is an unincorporated Winnebago County census-designated place at the north side of Lake Butte des Morts, with 1,005 residents in the 2020 census. The name means "hill of the dead" in French, tied to a burial mound and the old water route through the Fox-Wisconsin system. The hamlet's roads follow the lake edge and former Wisconsin 110, with Oshkosh and Winneconne supplying the larger nearby services. Water is the organizing feature, from old boat houses and channels to fishing, shoreline conservation, and views across the lake.

Local history runs deep for a place this small. Augustin Grignon and James Porlier established a fur-trading post here in 1818, and the settlement later had hotels, taverns, a brewery, school, church, general store, and service station. The Augustin Grignon Hotel is the only local building on the National Register, while the Butte des Morts Historical Preservation Society keeps the stories, photos, and old buildings in circulation. Butte des Morts is a lake hamlet where French, Indigenous, and Wisconsin settlement histories sit on one shoreline.