The Mazomanie Downtown Historic District contains an excellent collection of 29 nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial buildings. Mazomanie was plotted in 1855 and incorporated in 1885. Edward Brodhead, an officer of the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad Company, selected the site and named the village after an Indian Chief, whose name he translated as "Iron Horse." By the mid 1870s, Mazomanie was a thriving industrial village of more than 1100 people.