The settlers laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes.

They were part of a wave of New England farmers who headed west into what was then the wilds of the Northwest Territory during the early 1800s.

When they arrived in what is now Waukesha County, the New Englanders laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes.

They brought with them many of their Yankee New England values, such as a passion for education, establishing many schools as well as staunch support for abolitionism.

Due to the second Great Awakening some of them had converted to Methodism and some had become Baptists before moving to what is now Waukesha County.

[10] The first appointed mayor of the newly incorporated city of Waukesha was John Brehm,[12] who served from January to April 1896.

[17] Around the same time there was also relatively large amounts of Serbian immigrants settling in Waukesha, many more of which arrived after the Yugoslav Wars much later in the 1990s.

[18] "Waukesha" is thought to be an Anglicization of the Ojibwe word Waagoshag, the plural of fox (waagosh), or the Potawatomi name Wau-tsha.

Wau-tsha (sometimes written as Wauk-tsha[19] or Wauke-tsha) was the leader of the local tribe at the time of the first European settlement of the area.

[21] Cutler also told visitors about Wau-tsha, who was described as "tall and athletic, proud in his bearing, dignified and friendly.

Waukesha was once known for its extremely clean and good-tasting spring water and was called a "spa town."

"[22][23] According to author Kristine Adams Wendt, in 1868, Colonel Richard Dunbar, a sufferer of diabetes, chanced upon the medicinal properties of what he later named the Bethesda Spring while viewing a parcel of land recently purchased by his sister.

[24] Wendt reports that by 1872, "area newspapers carried accounts of a community ill equipped to handle its new popularity among the suffering multitudes.

The semi-weekly Wisconsin (Milwaukee) of July 31, 1872, reported 'that fully 500 visitors are quartered in hotels and scattered in private families here, seeking benefit from the marvelous waters…'" The "healing waters" were so valued that a controversial attempt was made to build a pipeline between the city and Chicago so that they could be enjoyed by visitors to the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

[25] According to Time magazine, "[t]he scheme had been conceived by one Charles Welsh who had been given the springs by his uncle, but after several miles of pipe were laid, it was discovered that the cost was too great.

In 1914, Sears died in Waukesha of Bright's disease, leaving an estate estimated at $20 million.

SLU halfback Bradbury Robinson threw the first legal forward pass in football history in that game.

In the city of Waukesha, the U.S. Army and later the Wisconsin National Guard operated the command and control center from 1956 to 1970 at what is now Hillcrest Park, on Davidson Road.

The Hercules provided a similar nuclear capability as that of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in World War II.

[53] One of the two New Tribes Bible Institute campuses within the United States is located on a large hill in central Waukesha.

Operated by New Tribes Mission, the school doubles as the first part of a four-year missionary training program, which includes field training in the U.S.[54] Waukesha Metro Transit provides fixed-route and dial-a-ride transit services within the city.

The Union Pacific (Chicago & North Western) Waukesha Subdivision terminates at WI 164.

In 2023, the city switched from groundwater with unsafe levels of radium to water from Lake Michigan through 35 miles (56 km) of pipelines.