His nearest neighbor was located 24 miles away in Dodgeville and, as of 1832, the only other recorded inhabitants were four French-Canadian fur traders south of Green Bay and east of Rock River.
He later accompanied William S. Hamilton and Henry Gratiot and several others to Green Bay to negotiate boundaries between the miners and local tribes.
His tavern became a popular stopover along the Old Military Trail,[6] and soon his small mining camp grew with settlers arriving from Illinois and within the Michigan Territory.
Involved in politics during his later years, Brigham was a member of the territorial council between 1836 and 1842[1][7] and a state representative in 1848,[1] and he served on the Dane County board of commissioners in 1845, 1848–1850, and 1854–1855.
Although the original cabins at the site had long since disappeared, the general store remained at Blue Mounds for over forty years as an historic landmark until it was destroyed in a fire in January 1877.
[12] In March 1910, his heirs donated the site of an old blockhouse from Fort Blue Mounds to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin having been used during the Black Hawk War.
[13] A bronze tablet marking the site of the fort was unveiled by the Wisconsin Landmarks Committee in a special ceremony held on September 5, 1910.