Cobb, WI

Cobb is a village in Iowa County, Wisconsin, with 480 residents in the 2020 census and a past written in several names. In 1847 John Meeker and E.R. Pritchett bought 880 acres of rolling prairie, and the settlement first gathered around an inn on the stage road called Cross Plains. It later became Danville, after Daniel Zimmer, then Village of Eden, before taking the name Cobb in honor of General Amoss Cobb, an Iowa County lawyer, district attorney, and state senator. A post office was established in 1850.

The village's early map was shaped by travel, farming, and a little Sunday race-track culture around the old Cross Plains house. Today Cobb is still an incorporated village with a president, clerk-treasurer, and board of trustees; the village website lists its municipal address on Moundview Street. It sits within the Madison metropolitan area while keeping the scale of a small Iowa County place. The local scoop is the name trail: Cross Plains, Danville, Eden, and Cobb each mark a different chapter, from stage-road stop to agricultural settlement to the village that stayed.