Flowers for Grafton, WI

For a few years in the early 1930s, some of the most important blues and gospel records in America were pressed in Grafton — Paramount Records ran its plant on the Milwaukee River here, and Son House and Charley Patton cut sides that the town now marks at Paramount Plaza downtown. That river built the place long before the music: the first lime kiln fired on its banks in 1846, and the mills that used its current gave Grafton its start. Today Grafton is a Milwaukee suburb 20 minutes up I-43, and delivery works at metro speed. Wisconsin Avenue and the riverwalk anchor the compact downtown; subdivisions spread off Falls Road and Highway 60; Aurora Medical Center on Port Washington Road pulls a steady line of get-well and new-baby orders; and the interstate keeps the wider Ozaukee bench close.

Other Wisconsin cities.