Wisconsin picked up its first UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019 when eight major works by architect Frank Lloyd Wright were inscribed on the official list, including Taliesin, his estate and home near his birthplace in the Badger State, and Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House in Madison. In anticipation of his world heritage honor, Wisconsin’s Department of Tourism had already unveiled the Frank Lloyd Wright Trail in 2017, the 150th anniversary of Wright’s birth. Stretching from Racine in the southeast corner of the state to Spring Green an hour west of Madison, the roughly 200-mile driving route takes travelers past his most famous architectural works in Wisconsin.
Many know Wright for his Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, but his inspirations came from the countryside of Wisconsin. Born near Richland Center, in the beautiful unglaciated land known as the Driftless Area, Wright grew up in a rural setting until the family eventually moved to Madison. Even then, Wright spent time out on his maternal grandparents’ farm, also in the Driftless Area near Spring Green, Wisconsin. The rolling hills and prairies that he loved would influence a lifetime of work.
