Valders, WI

Valders is a Manitowoc County village on U.S. Route 151, about two miles east of the Manitowoc River and ten miles west of the city of Manitowoc on Lake Michigan. Its first settlers came from the Valdres mountain region of Norway in the 1850s, and that Norwegian background remains the clearest historical thread. The highway puts Valders in a practical central-county position, with farm roads feeding toward Manitowoc and the smaller communities around it.

Village offices, public works, local industries, and Valders Area School District make up the current civic map. The district runs from kindergarten through twelfth grade and serves a wide rural area that includes Cato, Eaton, Liberty, Manitowoc Rapids, Newton, Rockland, St. Nazianz, Valders, and Whitelaw. The village also keeps its own board meetings, water and sewer services, and annual community events. The Norwegian settlement story still turns up in local gatherings and place names. Valders’s local scoop is the combination of a Norwegian place-name legacy and a modern school-centered village, with U.S. 151 doing the regional connecting.