Platteville is the largest city in Grant County, Wisconsin, United States.

[4] Platteville is located atop the greater Platte River valley in the southern Driftless Region of Wisconsin, an area known for its karst topography and rolling hills.

Platteville was settled by pioneers and early lead miners; along inlets and flat groves of The Rountree Branch and Little Platte River.

Due to its geographic location; areas of town are carved by ridges, narrow valleys, and steep hills.

As the town grew, roads were given odd routes, to avoid the steep ravines and mining shafts strewn about the locality.

[6] Platteville was officially founded in 1829 by John H. Rountree, a southern businessman who had arrived in hopes of finding wealth during the areas lead rush.

The town became a flourishing mining community in part due to its close proximity to Dubuque, Iowa, and Galena, Illinois.

Both were thriving cities along the Mississippi River trade route that benefited from the rising demand for lead throughout the United States from the 1820s–1850s.

John H. Rountree and other wealthy southerners in the area, such as Wisconsin’s First Governor Henry Dodge; brought slaves with them during the lead rush.

They also brought freed black laborers, with intentions for them to work the mines at a more affordable cost, often nothing.

[7][8] In 1850, a freed African-American man from Virginia, named Charles Shepard, settled a community known as Pleasant Ridge, Grant County, Wisconsin just west of Platteville.

This served as a safe haven for many black people coming up the Mississippi River from Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, etc.

Platteville had become an established town, complete with schools, a private preparatory academy, newspaper, several churches, and a telegraph service as of November 1849.

[12] From 1984 until 2001 the Chicago Bears football team held summer training camp on the campus of University of Wisconsin–Platteville.

The town felt the decline after the Bears moved their training camp to Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois.

[13] It is in the Hollow Region, as named by early southern miners, in the rolling hills of southwestern Wisconsin.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 6.18 square miles (16.01 km2), all of it land.

Platteville's primary road access is via U.S. Route 151, which acts as an expressway for the region; US 151 has three exits near the city center.

Wisconsin state routes 80 and 81 also serve Platteville, cutting through the central business district as sort of a "main street".

It was previously served by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway (C&NW) via an 8-mile branch off the Montfort Junction to Galena line at Ipswich.

This in effect created a large 180° curve in the southeastern part of Platteville where the mines, depots and other rail-dependent industries were located.

The abandonment was granted in 1980 and the line was pulled up forever ending railroad service to Platteville.