Abandoned Towns
Aerial view of the Castle Rock Lake embankment, with open water to the west and woods, a ditch and fields to the east

Quincy

A river village that served as the first seat of Adams County, lost the county seat to Friendship in 1858 and its post office in 1915. Castle Rock Lake now laps against an embankment across the old townsite.

About 43°52′46″N 89°57′04″W · ≈880 ft

Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map (public domain).

Location approximate

No source pins down where Quincy's buildings stood, and part of the site is under Castle Rock Lake. The Quincy Cemetery on Edgewood Avenue is the one public landmark on the old village quarter. Land around it is private unless posted otherwise.

Overview

Adams County's first seat

When Adams County was organized in 1853, its seat was fixed for five years at the village of Quincy, on the east bank of the Wisconsin River in the southwest quarter of Section 7. The Town of Quincy then took in four townships along the river, and with the Town of Jackson it shared the claim of being the oldest town in the county. Its early settlers, the Adams County Press wrote in 1876, lived close to the river, and the Spains and others had "struck their stake at Quincy." A post office opened in March 1854.

Quincy kept the county seat only for its first term. In 1858 voters approved moving the seat to Friendship, a village founded by settlers from Friendship, New York. We found no account of the village after that, only that its post office lasted until June 1915.

The river did the rest. The Wisconsin River Power Company began the Castle Rock Dam downstream in 1947 and finished it in 1951, and the river backed up into Castle Rock Lake, the fourth largest lake in Wisconsin. The federal gazetteer marks Quincy "Inundated by Castle Rock Lake." The 1961 USGS sheet shows an embankment along the old east bank holding the water back, with the Quincy Cemetery and the town hall on dry ground just east of it. Part of the village quarter went under, and part did not.

We found no description of the village itself: no count of buildings or people, no date when the last house went. Read the dates below as what the county histories and the post office records give.

Timeline

County seat, post office, reservoir

  1. Adams County is organized. Its seat is fixed for five years at the village of Quincy, on the southwest quarter of Section 7, Township 16 North, Range 5 East, on the east bank of the Wisconsin River.
  2. The Town of Quincy, covering townships 16 and 17 of ranges 4 and 5, sends Thomas J. Greenwood to the county board.
  3. A Quincy post office opens.
  4. Voters approve moving the county seat from Quincy to Friendship.
  5. The Quincy post office closes.
  6. The Castle Rock Dam is built downstream, and the Wisconsin River backs up into Castle Rock Lake.
  7. The USGS Adams sheet shows the lake against an embankment at the old river bank, with the Quincy Cemetery and the town hall on dry land east of it.

What's left

A cemetery by the embankment

The Quincy Cemetery is on Edgewood Avenue in Section 7, east of Castle Rock Lake and about a mile west of County Highway Z, according to a genealogy transcription made in 2006. A geocacher's report from July 2009 calls it a still-active cemetery, quite large and with room to grow, close to the lake but without a view of it. It notes Civil War veterans' graves with an older style of metal military marker, big bur oaks along the walkways, and gates that were open; the visitors parked on the road outside the fence.

The village itself has left no known trace. Today the old quarter section holds open water west of the embankment and, east of it, the Castle Rock Ditch, woods and a few fields, with houses along the roads farther east. The Quincy Town Hall stands about half a mile east of the cemetery at 2599 Edgewood Avenue. We found no source on who owns the woods and the embankment.

The old maps tell the story. The 1957 Madison sheet, at small scale, shows Castle Rock Lake new-made with the Wisconsin River running on below the dam. The 1961 Adams sheet names the Quincy Cemetery and the Townhall on Edgewood Avenue's line, a gaging station by the lake's south end, and the embankment curving along the shore.

  • Quincy Cemetery, still in use (2009 report)
  • The embankment along the old east bank of the Wisconsin River
  • No known building of the village
USGS topographic map of the Castle Rock Lake shore with the embankment, the Castle Rock Ditch and the Quincy Town Hall
USGS The National Map, topo. The lake fills the west half. The embankment and the Castle Rock Ditch run along the shore, with the Quincy Town Hall to the east on the road below.
Aerial view of open water, the embankment, a wooded strip and fields
Aerial imagery, closer in. The lake to the west, the embankment, a strip of woods with the ditch, and fields and houses to the east.

Historic maps

Quincy on USGS maps, 1957–1961

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

USGS topographic map around Quincy, 1957
Madison sheet, 1957, 1:250,000 · U.S. Geological Survey, public domain · catalog record

Maps & access

Location and access

We give no driving route to the estimated point, which lies on the embankment and partly in the lake. The landmark the sources agree on is the Quincy Cemetery on Edgewood Avenue, about a mile west of County Highway Z on the east side of Castle Rock Lake, south of Friendship and Adams. Visit the cemetery respectfully, and treat the woods and the embankment as private land unless they are posted otherwise.

USGS topographic map of the east shore of Castle Rock Lake around the Quincy townsite

Where exactly was it?

The federal gazetteer (GNIS 1837599) puts "Quincy (historical)" at a point that is now in Castle Rock Lake and notes "Inundated by Castle Rock Lake"; Wikipedia uses that point and says the community was flooded. The county histories are more exact. The Adams County Press of January 1, 1876 says the village of Quincy is on Section 7, Township 16, Range 5, on the east bank of the Wisconsin River, and the 1878 state atlas and the 1881 History of Northern Wisconsin name the southwest quarter of that section as the county seat, "the village of Quincy." We plotted the center of that quarter as our best estimate. The gazetteer's point sits about 80 yards northwest of the quarter's southwest corner.

The quarter section now straddles the embankment that holds the lake back. Its western part is under water; its eastern part is dry woods with a drainage ditch and the Quincy Cemetery. So both accounts may be partly right, and no source we found says which buildings stood where.

Have you found it? If you know where Quincy stood, a foundation, a cemetery, a marker, tell us where. We check every report against the old maps before we change this page.

Access and safety notes

  • Edgewood Avenue runs east from the lake past the cemetery and the town hall to County Highway Z.
  • We found no source on public access to the embankment or the woods west of the cemetery.

Photos

Have photos of Quincy?

We haven’t added photographs of Quincy yet. If you’ve visited, share your photos and a field report below.

Visitor reports

Did you find Quincy?

We don't know exactly where Quincy stood. If you have found the site, a foundation, the cemetery or a marker, tell us where: coordinates from your phone, or directions from the nearest road. Photos help. We check every report against the old maps before it appears here or changes the map.

Nearby

Other sites near Quincy

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

Sources

Sources and credits

  1. Wikipedia, "Quincy (ghost town), Wisconsin", retrieved October 2026: the ghost town label, coordinates (GNIS 1837599), the flooding by Castle Rock Lake, the post office from March 1854 to June 1915 (citing Edward Callary, Place Names of Wisconsin, 2016, page 228). The article is in Wikipedia's ghost towns in Wisconsin category and on its list of ghost towns in Wisconsin.
  2. HometownLocator, GNIS feature 1837599, read October 2026: "Quincy (historical)," a populated place at 43.8763604, -89.956238, "Inundated by Castle Rock Lake."
  3. Genealogy Trails, Adams County history, read October 2026: transcriptions of the Adams County Press, January 1, 1876 (the Town of Quincy's extent, Greenwood in 1853, the Spains, the county seat on the east bank, the village on Section 7, Germantown detached from it, the oldest town with Jackson) and of the History of Northern Wisconsin, 1881 (the SW quarter of Section 7, the 1858 vote for Friendship).
  4. Illustrated Historical Atlas of Wisconsin (Snyder, Van Vechten and Co., 1878), Adams County history, transcribed: the county seat fixed for five years on the SW quarter of Section 7, T16N R5E, the village of Quincy; the vote to move it to Friendship.
  5. Wikipedia, "Adams County, Wisconsin", retrieved October 2026: the county founded in 1853, Friendship settled from Friendship, New York.
  6. Wikipedia, "Castle Rock Lake", retrieved October 2026: the Wisconsin River Power Company dam, begun in 1947 and completed in 1951, the fourth largest lake in the state.
  7. Links to the Past, "Quincy Cemetery", read October 2026: its location on Edgewood Avenue in Section 7, east of the lake and about a mile west of County Highway Z; the 2006 transcription.
  8. Geocaching, "WSQ Quincy Petrified Tree" (GC1WGAD), hidden July 29, 2009: the cemetery active and large, near the lake, Civil War graves, bur oaks, open gates, parking on the road.
  9. Quincy Cemetery and Quincy Town Hall (2599 Edgewood Avenue): OpenStreetMap. Section lines: BLM PLSS CadNSDI. Historic maps: USGS Madison 1:250,000 (1957) and Adams 1:62,500 (1961) sheets.
  10. Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query.

Photo and map credits

What we know, and don't

Known: the county seat from 1853 to 1858, its quarter section, the post office dates, the cemetery. Missing: a plat, a building or population count, photographs, and where exactly the buildings stood. The Wisconsin Historical Society catalogs an 1855 map of Quincy that we could not open. Have you seen it, or old photos of the village? Tell us.