Why does Wisconsin have towns, villages and cities — some with the same name?

Blame it on the founding fathers. And possibly a little neighborly competitiveness.

The maps of the Milwaukee area and the rest of Wisconsin are covered in towns, villages and cities — some of them with the same names, right next to each other.

Readers have asked What the Wisconsin? — the place where the Journal Sentinel takes on questions about our state, our communities and the people in them — why that is, and whether Wisconsin is the only place where that happens.

Why does Wisconsin have towns, villages and cities?

First, there's the business of towns, villages and cities.

The makeup of municipalities in Wisconsin and the rest of the Midwest has its roots in the Northwest Ordinance, according to Jerry Deschane, executive director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities.

Adopted in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance — drawn up from principles laid down earlier by Thomas Jefferson — set up governing structures for what was then the Northwest Territory, including the later states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota.

Under the ordinance, the basic form of municipal government was a township. In some of the states carved out of the old Northwest Territory, like Michigan, they're still called townships. In Wisconsin, they're towns. (Here, "township" refers to a surveying unit, according to the Wisconsin Towns Association.)

Towns are unincorporated municipalities that, under Wisconsin law, may carry out only specific functions, such as road maintenance and fire protection; other services have to be approved by the local electorate.

Villages and cities, on the other hand, have broader powers, defined under state statute. Incorporated by the state, villages and cities are carved out of a town's land by petition and annexation.

Most of Wisconsin's 72 counties have all three forms of local government — cities, villages and towns. One county that doesn't: Milwaukee, which has been town-less for more than 60 years.

Why does Wisconsin have towns and cities with the same name?

Since a city or village has its roots in the predecessor town, it's not surprising that some might keep the name, Deschane said. There's no state law that says two neighboring municipalities can't share a moniker.

"Why? I think because nobody thought it might be confusing," he wrote.

Many states beyond Wisconsin have towns that have the same names as neighboring cities or villages. Michigan, for example, has the city-township combos of Manistee, St. Ignace, Niles and Watervliet, among many others.

You can find such municipal "pairings," as Deschane referred to them, all over Wisconsin, from Douglas County — which actually has a Superior trifecta, with the Town of Superior surrounding the village of the same name, while the City of Superior is just north of both of them — to Kenosha County, where the remnants of the Town of Somers sit next to the much larger village of the same name.

Waukesha County might be the potentate of pairings, with identically named four town-city combos (Brookfield, Delafield, Oconomowoc, Waukesha), three sets of same-name towns and villages (Eagle, Merton, Mukwonago), and the city and village of Pewaukee.

The Village of Pewaukee vs. the City of Pewaukee

The latter pairing sparked some consternation back in 1999, when residents in the then-Town of Pewaukee voted overwhelmingly — 1,963 to 143 — to change from an incorporated town to the City of Pewaukee.

The town decided to incorporate after losing a third of its land to the Village of Pewaukee and the City of Waukesha. At the time, Town Chairman Brent Redford told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he had preferred the name Pewaukee City but other officials liked City of Pewaukee better.

Officials with the village did not agree.

"To us, we are two different communities. There ought to be a reasonable distinction," Jennifer Sheiffer, Pewaukee village administrator, told the Journal Sentinel.

Sheiffer sent a letter to Secretary of State Douglas La Follette opposing the use of "Pewaukee" in any version of the new city's name. "We feel the use of the name Pewaukee rightfully belongs to the village," she wrote.

La Follette responded that his office's only responsibility was issuing a certificate of incorporation to the new city: "I am unaware of anything this office can do to prohibit the Town of Pewaukee from incorporating under whatever name they choose," he wrote.

Officials at the former town weren't budging. Harlan Clinkenbeard, then town administrator, pointed out to the Journal Sentinel that the Town of Pewaukee dated back to 1843, while the village had been incorporated in 1876.

"We've been here longer," Clinkenbeard said.

Sources: Journal Sentinel archives, League of Wisconsin Municipalities, Wisconsin Towns Association, National Archives

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story mistakenly said the Northwest Ordinance was adopted in 1878.

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