Cato is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

located in the town of Cato,

Manitowoc County Manitowoc County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census, the population was 81,359. Its county seat is Manitowoc. The county was created in 1836 prior to Wisconsin's statehood and organized in 1848. Manitowoc Co ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

, United States. Cato is located on

U.S. Route 10 U.S. Route 10 or U.S. Highway 10 (US 10) is an east–west United States Numbered Highway located in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions of the U.S. Despite the "0" as the last digit in the number, US 10 is no longer a cross- ...

west of Whitelaw. U.S. Route 10 also forced the razing of much of downtown Cato.

History

Cato was originally known as Nettle Hills due to the abundant itchy weed before being renamed after a settler's hometown, Cato, New York. As a station along a train line from Manitowoc to Forest Junction, Cato averaged 8 trains a day. A school existed from the 1900s to 1930s and a

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Pr ...

church from then to the 1960s. The post office lasted for 128 years. In 1992, a project to improve U.S. 10 required the purchase of the townsite and much of the downtown buildings to be razed, thus resulting in historical buildings coming down.

References

Unincorporated communities in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin Unincorporated communities in Wisconsin {{ManitowocCountyWI-geo-stub