The area then became part of the Michigan Territory, and gained importance during the 1820s, when large deposits of lead (commemorated on the obverse of the coin) were discovered in southwestern Wisconsin.

[6] Many of these early miners chose to live in their shafts, rather than building a separate house, leading to the nickname "badgers" for Wisconsinites.

Until 1954, the entire mintage of such issues was sold by the government at face value to a group authorized by Congress, who then tried to sell the coins at a profit to the public.

At the request of the groups authorized to purchase them, several coins minted in prior years were produced again, dated 1936, senior among them the Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar, first struck in 1926.

[6] As numismatic author Q. David Bowers put it, "the establishment of the territorial government [was] a rather obscure event to observe with a nationally-distributed coin".

[10] Numismatist Bob Bair, writing in 2021, deemed the Wisconsin Centennial "one of the many events of strictly local interest in the 1920s and 1930s that, with the assistance of Congress and the U.S. Mint, used commemorative coinage to enhance their revenue".

[7] La Follette introduced legislation for a Wisconsin Territorial half dollar in the United States Senate on January 30, 1936; it was referred to the Committee on Banking and Currency.

Other issues had been entirely bought up by single dealers, and some low-mintage varieties of commemorative coins were selling at high prices.

[19] The House of Representatives passed the bill, with the committee amendments and without debate or dissent, on April 28, 1936, on the motion of Wisconsin's Gardner R.

On May 4, Adams moved that the Senate agree to the House amendment, which it did;[21] the bill became law, authorizing not fewer than 25,000 legal-tender Wisconsin half dollars, with the signature of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on May 15, 1936.

[23] The CFA was charged by a 1921 executive order by President Harding with rendering advisory opinions on public artworks, including coins.

[24] On May 14, 1936, the CFA chair, Charles Moore, wrote to Hawkins informing him of the Centennial Commission's requirements and enclosing a copy of the territorial seal.

Behind it are three arrows, symbolic of the conflict between settlers and the Black Hawk Indians, with an olive branch, marking the peace that paved the way for the establishment of the territory,[29] or, as Anthony Swiatek and Walter Breen put it in their 1988 book on commemorative coins, "the massacre and expulsion of the Indians that made the area safe for white settlers".

[29] Hawkins's initial H appears below the badger,[30] which represents Wisconsin's early fur-trading days; both sides of the half dollar emphasize the natural resources of the state.

[33] Cornelius Vermeule, an art historian who wrote a book on American coins and medals, disliked the Wisconsin half dollar and compared its design to that on a box of baking soda.

[34]The Coinage Committee was confident enough that the authorizing legislation would become law that Harris, who served as the coin's distributor, began accepting orders in April 1936, a month before the bill passed.

[11] The coin was mentioned favorably in Wisconsin local newspapers, which claimed that the issue had immediately sold out due to orders from far and wide.