The name of Wisconsin's "First Capitol" state historic site seems clear enough. But it doesn't prepare you for some of the more surprising historical truths you'll encounter there.

In today's times, we often assume people from opposite political parties make "strange bedfellows"—but the planners of Wisconsin's first legislative session decided to assume nothing.

When you pull into the Wisconsin Historical Society site, located near Belmont in southwestern Wisconsin, you'll see not one, but two, big buildings. One was the council house. Thirty-nine legislators from around Wisconsin Territory (an area comprising what is now Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and the eastern halves of the Dakotas) filed into that room day after day in the fall and early winter of 1836, as they deliberated on matters including the question of where to build the permanent capitol (Madison was chosen, to be preceded by a stint in Burlington, Iowa).

But the building next to the council house was where each and every legislator—no matter which side of the aisle he sat on—lay down with his fellows and slept each night of the 46-day legislative term.

It's tempting to wonder what would happen if Wisconsin tried the same idea today. Would making legislators sleep together at night temper the partisan spirit of politics? Or would it fan the flames of discord?

One of that first crop of lawmakers, Henry Baird of Brown County, wrote home to his wife that "I have been for some time by no means well. In fact there has not been, during the last three weeks, more than one half of the members in the enjoyment of their usual health. The same complaints all have been subject to; and I can account for it in no other way than by attributing it to changes of diet, poor cookery, and a number of persons being crowded together...during both day and night." (Excerpts from Baird's letters are posted with other fascinating historical materials at the First Capitol site, which is open to the public.)

Physical maladies aside, it's hard to tell if the sleeping arrangements had any good effect on the tenor of Wisconsin's political culture, since the legislature only met here one year, except for one ceremonial occasion on the state's sesquicentennial.

After the first legislative session, because the surroundings offered such a dearth of wood for construction, the buildings were snatched up for other purposes, including housing the territory's first chief justice of the Supreme Court, Charles Dunn, and his family. (Dunn's daughter, Catherine, married the first state governor, Nelson Dewey, in the house in 1849.)

But as time went on, the buildings weren't kept up to their original condition. Eventually finding them unfit for people, the owners converted them into barns. When the State Historical Society examined the council house in 1906, it reported that "its present condition is one of decrepitude."

But eventually, the Society took over both structures and restored them as nearly as possible to their statehouse look—a rather minimalist version of a statehouse, mind you, but a statehouse nonetheless. (Take a virtual tour of Wisconsin's First Capitol.)

Now, no matter what walk of life you're from or what corner of Wisconsin Territory you hail from, you can visit the First Capitol, stand on the spare wooden floor and imagine you're addressing your fellow pioneer lawmakers in the newly Europeanized area of Wisconsin. But will you take the final challenge and snooze with the rest of your elected officials?