The League of Women Voters (LWV) of La Crosse County (formerly the La Crosse County League of Women Voters and the La Crosse League of Women Voters) was organized by the Wisconsin LWV president at a meeting on August 22, 1924. Three days later the group officially was chartered, with Alice Hixon as president and Grace Roberge as first vice-president. By September of that year, a small group of League members already had begun telephoning voters to encourage registration for the fall election. During its early years, the La Crosse League flourished; in 1926, there were 159 members from La Crosse, West Salem, and Bangor.
As a chapter of the Wisconsin LWV and an affiliate of the League of Women Voters of the United States, the La Crosse League was organized to promote voter awareness and participation in government, especially among newly-enfranchised women voters. Over the years the League as a whole has become active in lobbying and persuasion on the local, state, and national levels. Each chapter chooses from among a number of study topics suggested by the national and state organizations; each chapter studies these “continuing responsibilities,” reaches a group consensus on the topic, and then takes “action” in the form of writing letters and testifying at legislative hearings, at the time designated by national and state leadership. Many of the study topics involve broad local welfare categories: education and school systems; public health; natural resource conservation; voter education and registration; equal rights; and local, county, and state government. The La Crosse League also has studied the environment of the Mississippi River basin, chlorination and fluoridation of city drinking water, redistricting of city voting wards, and the quality of education at Washburn School in La Crosse.
The La Crosse League has raised money for its operations through a finance drive held every other year. In the alternate years, members assisted the La Crosse board of education by conducting the school census. The League published a booklet entitled This Is Your La Crosse County in 1960, for use in high school classes and for the League's local study topic. A similar booklet entitled La Crosse was published in 1963. In 1969 the League of Women Voters of the United States celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The national chairwoman of the event was Carroll Gunderson of the La Crosse League.
