Great Escape: Take a Step Back in Time at the Halquist Stone Museum in the Sussex Area

Every week, Patch will highlight a “Great Escape” located in the Menomonee Falls-Sussex area where couples, singles, families or groups can have fun, relax and hopefully not have to pay the current high price of gasoline by staying closer to home.

In 1929, Swedish immigrant John Halquist purchased a two-acre curbing quarry just outside of the Village of Sussex. With help from his son, Albin “Stoney” Halquist, he grew the small quarry into what is now one of the largest stone companies in Wisconsin by the end of of World War II. 

Halquist soon realized that Lannon Stone quarried in the area since the 1950s had a good reputation for producing high quality lime, curbing, paving, foundation and building stone.

Next door to the current Halquist Stone Co., N52W23565 Lisbon Rd., is an old museum building that Halquist has turned into a visitors center. Visitors to the museum can observe stone samples from the area, learn other historical facts about the Sussex and Lannon area and find out more about the history of the museum building itself.

The stone museum building was once a one-room school house called the Lisbon Plank Road School which opened around 1841 and closed in June 1951. The school was named after the green-white oak tree planks that were laid to build a plank road from Milwaukee to Oconomowoc.

After the school district chose to build a new school around 1868, the old school house became the Lisbon Town Hall for several years.

Throughout the time the school was open, there were about 110 to 125 alumni that graduated from the school. On Aug.12, 1990, about 200 people attended the all-school reunion of this very first Town of Lisbon school.

For more information on the museum, or to set up an appointment to tour the museum, call (262) 246-3561.