The Federal Writers' Project of Wisconsin was part of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program designed to provide jobs for unemployed professional and white-collar workers. In 1935, the WPA sponsored five nation-wide arts projects and established agencies in each state, including Wisconsin, with smaller units in each county. Statewide, the project employed 200 people in its early years. The Federal Writers' Project of Wisconsin was assigned the task of compiling a Wisconsin guide book as part of a national project. The writers were instructed to provide descriptions of the Wisconsin landscape, the people and the communities. The state was to sponsor the guide and assume the responsibility for its publication. The guide book for Wisconsin was compiled, but when the anti-New Deal administration of Governor Julius Heil took office, state support was withdrawn. Subsequently the Madison-Wisconsin Foundation agreed to sponsor the Madison portion of the Guide but eventually also withdrew its sponsorship. Eventually portions of the Madison, Milwaukee and Mineral Point guides were published. The Madison and Milwaukee tour guides, histories, and essays were heavily edited and included in the Wisconsin Library Association's 1941 book, Wisconsin: A Guide to the Badger State. The Mineral Point guide was published by the Mineral Point Historical Society in 1979 as The Story of Mineral Point. These published versions are briefer and in a more technical style than the detailed prose found in the original manuscripts.
In 1939 the Federal Writers' Project ended, causing the Federal Writers' Project of Wisconsin to close on September 1, 1939. It was re-opened in November as the Wisconsin Writers' Project, an independent state-wide agency. Its main job was to compile an Encyclopedia of Wisconsin Biography. The encyclopedia was tentatively divided into three volumes, the first of which would contain Wisconsinites who became prominent before the Civil War and were born before 1840. The second would encompass those who achieved prominence between 1865 and World War I, and the third would cover figures after World War I. Only a portion of the biographies for the first and second volumes were completed with the rest remaining in unedited form. Selected biographies were edited and published by the State Historical Society in 1960 as the Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography. No work was done on the third volume.
