Hall Automotive: This Week in 1926 – August 27, 2026 – Summer in Wisconsin, 100 Years Ago

As Hall Automotive celebrates 100 years in Wisconsin, we’re looking back at life in our home state during the same period when Hall’s Wisconsin story began with a Chevrolet dealership in 1926. 

Wisconsin Heads to the State Fair 

Late August means something familiar to generations of Wisconsin families: fair season. And 100 years ago, Wisconsin residents were doing much the same thing. 

Historical photographs preserved by the Wisconsin Historical Society document the 1926 Wisconsin State Fair, including county agricultural exhibits photographed on August 29. One surviving image shows the Rock County display highlighting the crops produced by Wisconsin farmers. 

Agriculture remained enormously important to Wisconsin’s economy and identity. But another machine was increasingly changing rural life: the automobile. 

The Car Connects Rural Wisconsin 

For families living outside Wisconsin’s cities, automobiles offered something revolutionary. Distance became less important. A trip into town that once required planning around a horse and wagon could increasingly be made by automobile. 

Farm families could travel farther for supplies, entertainment, and business. Children could visit relatives in neighboring communities. Families could attend fairs and community events miles from home and return the same day. 

The automobile wasn’t simply changing how people traveled. It was changing where people could work, shop, and socialize. 

Wisconsin Was Still a Place of Horses and Horsepower 

One of the fascinating things about looking at photographs from 1926 is seeing two eras existing at the same time. A Wisconsin Historical Society image dated August 20, 1926, for example, shows a farmer operating a horse-drawn cultivator behind a team of four horses. 

Meanwhile, automobiles were increasingly appearing on Wisconsin roads. For a period, horses and automobiles shared the landscape. One represented centuries of transportation tradition. The other represented the future. 

It must have been extraordinary to live through that transition. 

A Hot Finish to August 

Wisconsin residents attending late-summer events also experienced something familiar to us today: unpredictable August weather. 

Historical weather records show Milwaukee reaching 97 degrees on August 28, 1926, after temperatures had been considerably cooler earlier in the month. Imagine traveling Wisconsin roads on a 97-degree afternoon in a 1926 automobile—with no air conditioning. It gives “summer road trip” a slightly different meaning. 

From Wisconsin Roads in 1926 to Today 

One hundred years later, Wisconsin looks very different. 

Our farms use technology unimaginable in 1926. Our highways connect communities throughout the state. And automobiles can comfortably cover in an hour distances that once represented a significant journey. 

Yet some things haven’t changed. Wisconsin families still head to fairs. We still pile into our vehicles for summer trips. And automobiles still connect our communities. 

Hall Automotive has been fortunate enough to witness a century of that change. From the first Chevrolet customers of 1926 to today’s Mazda and Volkswagen drivers, generations of Wisconsin families have trusted automobiles to take them where life happens. 

We’re proud to have traveled alongside them. 

Hall Automotive – Serving Wisconsin Since 1926