Cheyenne Valley

Overview

A multi-racial farm valley

In 1855 Walden Stewart, a Black man born free in North Carolina, settled in a valley in the Town of Forest, west of Hillsboro. Wesley Barton, born in Alton, Illinois, in 1818 by the tour brochure's account (Wikipedia says about 1824), came that August and homesteaded 100 acres at a crossroads that took his name, Barton's Corners, where he was the first postmaster. Others followed: the Revels, Roberts, Bass, Arms and Waldron families and more. Many were free people of color whose families came from communities of mixed African, European and Native American descent in North Carolina and Indiana, and Quakers helped them make the move. In all nearly 150 African American settlers came. The state marker calls Cheyenne Valley Wisconsin's largest rural African American settlement of the 19th century. By 1870 eleven Black families, some 62 people, lived here.

A second wave came after the Civil War. Thomas Shivers, born into slavery on a Tennessee plantation, arrived in 1879 and built a farm of nearly 300 acres. The settlers farmed well and lived among European immigrant neighbors. The state marker says they set up some of the state's first integrated schools, churches and sports teams. Families intermarried. "We didn't even know we were integrated," a former resident is quoted in the tour brochure.

Thomas's son Alga, or Algie, Shivers (1889 to 1978) built the Harris round barn in 1906 and served in France in World War I. He supervised the building of at least 15 round barns, and the tour brochure says nearly half the round barns still standing in the area when it was written were his. The state marker says the automobile and other changes led to a gradual decline of the valley's rural African American population. For years historians treated it as a lost community; work by the sociologist James Knox Phillips in the 1960s helped bring it back to light. Descendants still hold yearly reunions.

Cheyenne Valley was spread across farms, crossroads schools, churches and cemeteries, and that is what the Vernon County Historical Society's heritage road tour visits today. The map point marks the tour's first stop, the Forest (Burr-Salem) Cemetery at Barton's Corners.

Timeline

Settlement, round barns and decline

1. 1850Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act. The state marker says Wisconsin's early defiance of it, and the end of slavery after the Civil War, encouraged freed slaves to settle in the state.
2. 1855Walden Stewart, born free in North Carolina, becomes the valley's first Black settler. Wesley Barton arrives in August and homesteads 100 acres at what becomes Barton's Corners.
3. 1850s–1880sNearly 150 African American settlers come with help from Quakers: the Revels, Roberts, Barton, Bass, Arms, Waldron and other families, many of them free people of color from North Carolina and Indiana.
4. 1870Eleven Black families, about 62 people, live in the area.
5. 1879Thomas Shivers, born into slavery on a Tennessee plantation, settles in the valley. By 1900 his farm has grown to nearly 300 acres.
6. 1889Alga (Algie) Shivers is born. He later supervises the building of at least 15 round barns in eastern Vernon and southeastern Monroe counties.
7. c. 1890–1940sThe Revels Valley Free Methodist church on Cheyenne Road serves white and mixed-race worshippers.
8. 1906Alga Shivers builds the Harris round barn for George Harris.
9. 1911He builds the Warner Creek round barn for Adam Mayenschein.
10. 1957The brick Salem School, built in 1925, closes. It is later torn down.
11. 1978Alga Shivers dies on November 27. He and his wife Flora are buried in the Forest (Burr-Salem) Cemetery.
12. 1980The Shivers farm is sold after more than a century in the family. Its house, round barn and outbuildings burn soon after.
13. 1997Wisconsin Historical Marker 383 goes up in Hillsboro, where the heritage road tour starts.
14. 2019Ten round barns still stand in Vernon County, the historical society counts. A storm destroys the 1921 Shivers-built Dank barn in July.
15. Feb 2025A newspaper column says a few of Alga Shivers's round barns still stand.

What's left

Eleven stops through the valley

The Vernon County Historical Society posts an undated brochure and map for the Cheyenne Valley Heritage Road Tour, written by historian Eric J. Wheeler after the 1997 marker went up. It starts at the marker in Hillsboro and loops about 30 miles through the valley, or 40 with a round barn loop. What it describes, stop by stop:

• 1. Barton's Corners and the Forest (Burr-Salem) Cemetery, at WI 33 and County Road V, about 6 miles west of Hillsboro. None of Barton's buildings remain. The cemetery, west of the crossroads on the south side of WI 33, was an inter-racial burying ground from the start. Bass, Arms, Waldon, Revels, Winchell, Roberts and Shivers family graves are here, among them Alga and Flora Shivers.
• 2. Forest Town Hall, about 2 miles west of the cemetery and half a mile up Town Hall Road, north of WI 33. The brochure puts it about a quarter mile southwest of the foundation of the original Cheyenne School, where many of the children were multi-racial. The Town of Forest's address today is its hall and shop at E15784 State Hwy 33, about half a mile northwest of Burr Corners. The Revels Cemetery is on an abandoned town road about a quarter mile south of WI 33.
• 3. Harris round barn, on Harris Road, built in 1906 for George Harris by Alga Shivers from the farm's own timber and stone. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
• 4. Fairview, on County Road F, where the Fairview Methodist Church burned in the 1940s. The brochure says the abandoned Fairview School could just be seen in the overgrowth, and the Fairview Cemetery holds graves of the Roberts family.
• 5 and 6. Stoddard and DeWitt round barns, on the round barn loop. The Stoddard barn, just north of the Vernon-Monroe county line, is built in the Shivers style, but its builder and date are unknown. The DeWitt family built theirs on County Road Z in 1912; the brochure notes its outside silo, unlike the Shivers barns. It is on the historical society's current round barn tour.
• 7. Cheyenne Road loop, past a vacant frame building that was the Revels and Roberts homestead. A grove of trees about half a mile on marks the stone foundation of the Revels Valley Free Methodist church, attended by white and mixed-race worshippers from about 1890 through the 1940s. Near Bugbee Hollow Road stood the log cabin of Samuel Arms, who escaped slavery in Georgia and served in the Union Army.
• 8. Salem School, on Burr Salem Road. The brick school of 1925 closed in 1957 and was torn down; a concrete foundation is left.
• 9. Eastman School, on Eastman Drive, which Bass and Arms children attended. The brochure calls it vacant and dilapidated and on private land. The State Historical Society acquired it in the mid-1970s, meaning to move it to Old World Wisconsin.
• 10. Warner Creek round barn, built in 1911 by Alga Shivers and his crew for Adam Mayenschein, a short way up a private drive off Fish Hollow Road. It is not among the ten barns the historical society lists as standing in Vernon County in 2019.
• 11. The Shivers farm on County Road P, settled by Thomas Shivers in 1879 and sold in 1980. Its buildings burned after the sale. A large white pine with a broken top marks the overgrown site.

The brochure is undated, so treat it as a guide to where things were. Round barns are still being lost. The historical society counted ten standing in Vernon County in 2019, and a storm that July destroyed the 1921 Dank barn, which Alga Shivers built.

The historic maps show the valley before the tour. The 1927 Hillsboro sheet names Bartons Corners, with the Cheyenne, Burr and Dilley schools around it, Barton Hollow to the north and Harris Valley beyond. The 1966 sheet marks the Forest-Burr Cemetery just southwest of the corner, a church and Wesleyan Camp to the northwest, the Revels Cemetery further west, and the name Cheyenne on the valley at the left edge.

• Forest (Burr-Salem) Cemetery, with the graves of Alga and Flora Shivers
• Revels and Fairview cemeteries
• Stone foundation of the Revels Valley Free Methodist church
• Eastman School, vacant (private)
• Salem School foundation
• Harris (1906) and DeWitt (1912) round barns, both on the historical society's 2019 list (private)
• Warner Creek (1911) and Stoddard round barns, standing when the brochure was written (private)
• Wisconsin Historical Marker 383 in Hillsboro

Historic maps

Cheyenne Valley on USGS maps, 1927–1966

Crops from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, centered on the townsite. Each sheet shows what surveyors mapped that year; compare them with today's topo and aerial on this page.

19271:62,50019661:62,500

Map & directions

Getting there

The tour starts at Wisconsin Historical Marker 383 in Cheyenne Settlers Heritage Park, on the southwest side of Hillsboro at Highway 80 and Elm Avenue, across from Mount Vernon Cemetery. From there WI 33 runs west into the valley to Burr Corners, the old Barton's Corners, and the first stop. From Madison the route below runs by interstate and county roads to Hillsboro.

Base map: USGS The National Map (public domain). Routes: OSRM on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), computed October 2026. Times assume dry roads.

Photos

Cheyenne Valley in photos

A round barn just off Highway 80 near Hillsboro, where the tour starts, March 2007. It stands outside the valley, and the photo's description does not name itThe Town of Forest's hall and shop on WI 33, about half a mile northwest of Burr Corners, September 2024

Visitor reports

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Nearby

Other sites near Cheyenne Valley

Straight-line distance from the townsite to other mapped sites in our Wisconsin index.

• Corwin14.5 mi SE · Richland
• Wells17.6 mi NW · Monroe
• Quincy29.4 mi NE · Adams
• Midway43.7 mi NW · La Crosse
• Charter Oak Mills46.4 mi NW · Jackson
• Clay51.5 mi N · Jackson
• Pendarvis (Mineral Point57.4 mi S · Iowa
• Trow58.9 mi N · Clark

Sources

Sources and credits

1. Wikipedia, "Cheyenne Valley, Wisconsin", retrieved October 2026: Walden Stewart in 1855, the early families, Wesley Barton (born about 1824), Barton Corners and its first postmaster, 62 people in 1870, Thomas Shivers in 1879, Alga Shivers and his round barns, James Knox Phillips, the 1997 marker. The article is listed in Wikipedia's ghost towns in Wisconsin category and on its list of ghost towns in Wisconsin.
2. Wikipedia, "Forest, Vernon County, Wisconsin", retrieved October 2026: the town's 617 people in 2020.
3. Vernon County Historical Society, "Cheyenne Valley", read October 2026: the marker text (nearly 150 settlers with Quaker help, integrated schools, churches and teams, the decline), and the undated Cheyenne Valley Heritage Road Tour brochure (page 1, page 2; research and writing by Eric J. Wheeler) and its tour map: the 11 stops, their directions and distances, the families and their origins, Wesley Barton's 1818 birth and 1855 arrival, Thomas Shivers as a former slave, the cemetery burials, the church, school and farm histories, the Shivers barns and the 1980 sale and fire, Alga Shivers's 15 barns, the former resident's quotation.
4. Kristen Parrott, Vernon County Historical Society museum notes, February 22, 2017: Alga Shivers's World War I service and his death on November 27, 1978.
5. Vernon County Historical Society, "Round Barns of Vernon County" and its round barn tour, read October 2026: ten barns standing in 2019, all on private property; the Harris barn (1906, National Register 2017), the DeWitt barn (1912) and the Dank barn (1921, destroyed July 2019).
6. Chris Hardie, Wisconsin NewsMedia Association, "Resilience will see us through", February 3, 2025: the valley in the western Town of Forest off Highway 33, Alga Shivers's round barns, a few still standing, the marker at Cheyenne Settlers Heritage Park.
7. Town of Forest, "Our History and Diversity", read October 2026: the land between Hillsboro and Ontario once known as Cheyenne Valley, settlers descended from free people of color and Native people, descendants' yearly reunions, round barns still visible. The town's contact and elections pages, read October 2026: its address and town shop at E15784 State Hwy 33.
8. Travel Wisconsin, "Cheyenne Valley Heritage Road Tour", read October 2026: the tour's start at the marker on the southwest side of Hillsboro, Highway 80 and Elm Avenue.
9. Wikideas1, "Forest Town Hall in Vernon County, Wisconsin", Wikimedia Commons, taken September 15, 2024 on WI 33 northwest of Burr Corners: the town hall and shop, with its E15784 address plate.
10. Forest-Burr Cemetery, Revels Cemetery and Fairview Cemetery: USGS GNIS names and points as mapped in OpenStreetMap; 1927 and 1966 USGS Hillsboro topographic sheets.
11. Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026.

Photo and map credits

• A round barn just off Highway 80 near Hillsboro, where the tour starts, March 2007. It stands outside the valley, and the photo's description does not name it: User Royalbroil on en.wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5
• The Town of Forest's hall and shop on WI 33, about half a mile northwest of Burr Corners, September 2024: Wikideas1, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
• Topo map, area base map and aerial imagery: USGS The National Map (public domain).
• Historic maps: USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (public domain): Hillsboro 1927, 1:62,500; Hillsboro 1966, 1:62,500.