Town of Troy, WI

The Town of Troy's own history page, written by local historian Al Gruling, starts with Major Jesse Meacham, a War of 1812 veteran who claimed land here in 1835 and moved in the next year. He became the first postmaster in 1837 and pushed to name the town after Troy, New York, and Troy, England. A creek running west to east through the town had so many bee trees along its banks that it was named Honey Creek, and it powered three mills: Amasa Bigelow's sawmill in 1839, a flour and gristmill later known as the Williams Mill and then Leans Mill, and Meacham's own flour mill in 1844.

The town grew five small villages: Troy, Troy Center, Adams, Mayhew and Little Prairie, which was first called Ray's Corners. Each had a school, a blacksmith, a store and a creamery. Adolphus Spoor, a friend of Meacham's from New York, built a house in 1851 on the town line with East Troy out of cobblestones gathered around Booth Lake. The town's history page says it still stands.

In 1870 a short rail spur called the Bobby Line linked the Western Union Railroad at Eagle with the Chicago and Milwaukee line at Elkhorn, and it ran through Troy Center. Troy Center grew a lumberyard, a stockyard, a hotel and a dance hall. Lulu Lake became an ice-harvesting lake, with men and horse teams cutting ice each winter for rail shipment to Chicago, until electric refrigeration ended the business. The empty icehouse then housed a bootleg distillery shipping whiskey to Chicago until officers arrived with axes. The Bobby Line stopped running on October 31, 1932.

The town's eight one-room school districts closed between 1915 and 1962 and were folded into neighboring districts, most of them into the East Troy Community School District. That history is why almost all of Troy is still in the East Troy district today.

Troy is the township in the north-central part of Walworth County. It touches Waukesha County on the north, the Town of East Troy on the east, the Town of LaFayette on the south and the Town of LaGrange on the west. Wikipedia lists 35.4 square miles, almost all of it land. The Wisconsin Department of Revenue estimates the 2025 population at 2,368, close to the 2,355 counted in the 2020 census.

It is not a village and has no downtown. The unincorporated crossroads of Troy Center, Little Prairie and Adams are the only settlements, and nearly every address uses an East Troy mailing address and ZIP code 53120. A small corner of the Village of East Troy also extends into the town. The town's homepage notes that 65% of the land was agricultural as of 2000, and the town's own history describes prairie in the northwest and south, a lowland marsh of about 3,000 acres in the south-central part of town, and Kettle Moraine country in the northeast.

The Census ACS for 2020-2024 counts 1,022 housing units, 952 of them detached single-family homes and 50 mobile homes. About 94% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, and only 35 units are held for seasonal use, a much smaller share than in the Town of East Troy next door. Troy is mostly year-round rural homes, with lake houses concentrated on Booth Lake.

What a town means in Wisconsin matters for an Illinois buyer. Troy has a town board, a clerk-treasurer, a volunteer fire department, a public works department and a water patrol, but no police department. The Walworth County Sheriff patrols. Zoning is county zoning. There is no municipal sewer or water outside the small Troy Center sanitary district. Every one of those facts shows up in the tax bill, the inspection list and the permit process.

You get a tax rate near 1% of value, and a drive of roughly 80 minutes to Lake County, Illinois and under an hour to Milwaukee.

Booth Lake is a modest lake that had a hard 2026, and Lulu Lake is a no-wake preserve, not a boating lake.

Troy is not organized by subdivisions the way Lake County, Illinois is. Property here is usually described by the nearest crossroads, the nearest lake, or the road. Here is how the town breaks down for a buyer.

Troy Center, along County Road J and Briggs Street, is the town's civic center: the town hall and fire station share N8870 Briggs Street, and the Troy Center Sanitary District serves a small cluster of homes with a public water system. Little Prairie, in the northwest, and Adams, near WI-20 and County J, are older crossroads with farms around them. Booth Lake, on the east side near the village of East Troy, is the town's main lake-home area. The Lulu Lake and Pickerel Lake area in the northeast sits among large preserved tracts. The rest is farms and wooded acreage, including the Honey Creek lowland in the south-central part of town.

The buyers I talk to from Illinois who look at Troy are usually after one of two things: room, meaning 5 to 40 acres with a house, or proximity to protected land that nobody can build on. Troy offers both, but the parcel size you can buy, and what you can build on it, is set by the county zoning district on the land, not by the listing.

The Town of Troy follows Walworth County zoning, and the county's Zoning Districts Summary is the most useful single document for anyone shopping land here. The district on a parcel sets the minimum size, and it is often the difference between a parcel that can be split and one that can't.

The farm districts set the floor high. A-1 Prime Agricultural land requires a 35-acre farm size, A-3 Agricultural Land Holding also requires 35-acre parcels, and A-2 Agricultural Land requires 20 acres and is the district the county uses for small farms, horse farms, hobby farms and tree farms on less productive soil. For a home on a smaller piece in a farm area, the county uses A-5 Agricultural-Rural Residential, which requires 40,000 square feet and 150 feet of width and is meant for land with limited farm value.

The conservation districts are where many wooded estate parcels land. C-2 Upland Resource Conservation, covering larger woodlands, steep and scenic ground, allows scattered single-family homes on a minimum of 5 acres and 300 feet of width. C-3 Conservancy-Residential allows homes in high-value forested areas on at least 100,000 square feet, about 2.3 acres, and 200 feet of width, but does not permit farming. C-1 Lowland Resource Conservation covers wetlands and floodplain and does not permit urban development. In a residential subdivision without sewer, R-1 requires 40,000 square feet and 150 feet of width.

Changing a district takes a rezone. In February 2026, for example, the town posted a public hearing notice for a March 4 Plan Commission hearing on a County Road J property, where part of an A-2 parcel needed to be rezoned to A-5 to allow a lot line adjustment. That is the normal path: the town Plan Commission reviews, and the county decides. The town's planning framework is the Multi-jurisdictional Comprehensive Plan for Walworth County: 2035, which the town board approved for Troy in 2009, built around compact urban areas, a strong farm base and rural character.

For a buyer, the practical rule is to read the zoning before you read the listing. A 30-acre parcel in A-2 may be splittable once; the same 30 acres in A-1 may not. A 6-acre wooded lot in C-2 can carry one house; in C-1 it may carry none. Ask for the zoning map and the parcel's history of land divisions, and add a survey contingency.

Booth Lake is the Town of Troy's main lake, even though most of its homes have East Troy addresses. The Booth Lake Management District says the entire lake lies in the town and describes it as 113 acres, 24 feet at its deepest, with 1.79 miles of shoreline and one small island. The DNR's Walworth County lake list puts it at 118 acres. It is a glacial "deep hole" lake with little surface inflow and no surface outflow, which matters for what follows.

The district was formed in May 1997 under Chapter 33 of the Wisconsin Statutes. It has a seven-member board: five elected by district members, one appointed by Walworth County and one by the Town of Troy. It includes 90 residential parcels, about 75% of the shoreline, plus seven properties added in 2005, and it notes that the equalized value inside the district is a significant share of the whole town's. Since 2002 the district has required septic system inspections for its properties, and it has run a Eurasian milfoil control program for years. On the 2025 county tax table, its levy line was zero.

Booth Lake Memorial Park, at N8465 Townline Road, is the lake's public face. It was established in August 1922 as a memorial to local veterans of World War I and is jointly owned by the Village of East Troy, the Town of East Troy and the Town of Troy. It has a beach, a boat launch, slips and pavilions, and is open Memorial Day through Labor Day from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. According to the village's June 2026 newsletter, season passes for residents of the three municipalities cost $25 per person, and a resident launch permit was $80 for the season.

The Town of Troy's water patrol enforces Chapter 14 of the town code on Booth Lake: slow-no-wake every day from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 a.m., a traffic lane beyond 150 feet from shore with slow-no-wake outside it, counterclockwise travel for faster boats, and two skiers allowed on weekdays only.

Summer 2026 was a hard one. On August 3, according to the town's water quality update, the Wisconsin Department of Health directed that the beach and boat landing close because tests found high levels of the blue-green algae toxin microcystin, higher than most lakes in the region. Both stayed closed for the rest of the year. The town and district point to the closed basin, an unusually warm and still summer, nutrients already in the water, and the 2025 milfoil treatment that removed oxygen-producing plants, and they report a fish kill this year. The Towns of Troy and East Troy, the village, the district and the park board say they will keep testing and build short- and long-term recovery plans.

If you are looking at Booth Lake frontage, ask for the district's latest test results and minutes, the septic inspection record for the house, and whether any recovery project will carry a special assessment. Booth Lake is a pleasant, mid-priced lake market, not a luxury one, and the 2026 closure is a real factor in pricing until the water recovers.

The northeast corner of Troy holds some of the most protected land in southeastern Wisconsin. Lulu Lake State Natural Area, designated in 1977, covers 1,866 acres across Walworth and Waukesha counties, 1,238 of them owned by the DNR and 627 by The Nature Conservancy. The DNR describes it as an exceptional mix of calcareous fen, sedge meadow, tamarack bog and oak opening prairie, communities that are nearly gone elsewhere in this part of the state. Lulu Lake itself is a 95-acre, 40-foot-deep kettle lake fed by the Mukwonago River. It is slow-no-wake, and the only boat access is by water from the Eagle Spring Lake launch. On land, there are parking areas off County Road J on the south, Highway E on the east and Nature Road on the west. Hunting and trapping are allowed on DNR land; camping, collecting and geocaching are not.

The Nature Conservancy calls the Mukwonago River one of the cleanest streams in southeastern Wisconsin. It owns 2,231 acres in the watershed across four preserves: Lulu Lake (632 acres), Pickerel Lake Fen (354 acres), Crooked Creek (591 acres) and the Newell and Ann Meyer Nature Preserve (652 acres). The Wikipedia article on the river puts the watershed at 47,500 acres with at least 53 fish species. In April 2026, Spectrum News reported that the Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited were restoring 80 acres at the Lulu Lake Preserve on the Waukesha County side by removing 22 ponds built in 1951 for trout farming, to cool the river.

Pickerel Lake, listed by the DNR at 32 acres, is one of the lakes the town's own history names along with Booth, Lulu, Swift and Peters, and Pickerel Lake Road meets County Road J in town. The town history also places the northeast part of Troy in the Kettle Moraine, the glacial ridge country that runs north through Waukesha County.

For a buyer, this matters in two ways. Land next to a preserve has a view and a neighbor that will not change, and that is the closest thing to a luxury feature in Troy. But land near fen, bog and floodplain is also land where wetland and shoreland rules apply, so a parcel's buildable area can be smaller than its acreage. Walworth County's shoreland code applies within 1,000 feet of a lake and 300 feet of a river or stream.

Troy's homes are almost all single-family houses on their own land. The ACS counts 952 detached houses out of 1,022 units, 50 mobile homes and only a handful of duplexes and small multi-unit buildings. Build years spread across the whole century: 206 homes from before 1940, 142 from the 1960s, 152 from the 1970s, 199 from the 1990s, 126 from the 2000s and 57 since 2010.

On the ground that means three kinds of property. Old farmhouses with outbuildings, often on the original farm parcel or a split from it. Ranches, split-levels and two-stories from the 1960s to the 2000s on rural lots of one to five acres. And a smaller group of newer custom homes on larger wooded or view parcels, mostly built since the 1990s. Booth Lake adds a lake-house layer of cottages and year-round homes on smaller lots.

Older farm property brings the inspection list I'd expect anywhere rural: the well, the septic, the age of the outbuildings, fuel oil or propane tanks, and any old farm dumps. I tell buyers in rural McHenry County, Illinois the same thing, and it applies here.

The ACS puts the median owner-occupied home value at $380,900, higher than the Village of East Troy's because rural homes come with land.

Troy is not a luxury market, and I would rather say that plainly than dress it up. Zillow's home value index for its "Troy" region in Walworth County was $523,973 in August 2026, up 4.2% from $503,009 a year earlier. Its top-tier index, covering the most expensive third of homes, was $715,578, down 0.4%. In other words, the typical home is gaining value, and the top of the market is flat.

The ACS value bands show where the ceiling sits. Of 898 owner-occupied homes, 147 are valued between $500,000 and $750,000, 75 between $750,000 and $1 million, 10 between $1 million and $1.5 million, and 5 at $2 million or more. Seven-figure property exists in Troy, mostly large acreage, preserve-adjacent estates and the best Booth Lake frontage, but it is rare. A buyer looking for $2 million and up on the water is usually better served on Lake Beulah in the Town of East Troy or on Geneva Lake to the south.

Sales are too few to report a reliable median. Neither Redfin nor Zillow publishes sales data for the Town of Troy as its own market, and a handful of rural sales a quarter will swing any average. Land prices depend on zoning, frontage, woods versus tillable acres and whether a parcel can be split, which is why I price Troy land parcel by parcel.

For a buyer from Illinois, Troy's value is room per dollar and a protected landscape at under 90 minutes from Lake County.

Wisconsin taxes property at a mill rate, dollars per $1,000 of assessed value, set by adding up the county, town, school, technical college and special-district levies and subtracting the state's school levy credit. The town's assessor sets assessed values; the state publishes an assessment ratio comparing them to market value.

For 2025, the Department of Revenue put the Town of Troy's assessment level at 95%, its total full value at about $525 million, and its effective full-value tax rate at $10.20 per $1,000 of market value after the state school levy credit, about 1.02% a year. The Walworth County 2025 mill-rate table breaks it down per $1,000 of assessed value: $2.45 county, $1.78 town, $0.56 Gateway Technical College, and either $7.48 for the East Troy school district or $7.24 for Elkhorn, less a $1.45 school levy credit. That nets to about $10.82 in the East Troy district and $10.58 in Elkhorn. The Booth Lake Management District, Pabst Lake District and Troy Center Sanitary District lines were all zero for 2025.

A worked example. A $1 million acreage home in the East Troy district, assessed at 95% (about $950,000), would carry about $10,280 a year at 2025 rates before individual credits. The lottery and gaming credit applies only to a Wisconsin resident's primary residence on January 1, so an Illinois owner using Troy land as a weekend place won't get it; the first dollar credit applies to any improved parcel. On farm parcels, ask how the land is classified on the assessment roll before you assume its bill will stay the same after you buy it.

Two 2026 items could move future bills. On September 24, 2026, the town board adopted Resolution 2026-04, proposing to exceed the state levy limit through a town meeting vote. And the East Troy school district's April 2026 operating referendum failed, which the district said would lower its levy about $92 per $100,000 of assessed value; a future referendum could raise it again.

When you sell, the Wisconsin transfer fee is $3 per $1,000 of value, paid by the seller. This is general information, not tax advice; your bill depends on your parcel, its classification and your exemptions.

Almost every home in Troy runs on a private well and a private septic system. The exception is Troy Center. The Troy Center Sanitary District No. 1, created by petition in 1957, runs a small public water system: one well, a 4,000-gallon pressure tank, 5,700 feet of six-inch main and seven fire hydrants. In 2025 the district added a backup generator, upgraded the pumphouse electrical system and installed a new pump, and its boundaries were amended to match development since its founding. It is regulated by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin. In September 2026 the town adopted Resolution 2026-03, authorizing a loan of up to $9,820.10 to refund a public fire protection fee the district had collected by direct charge before July 14, 2026.

On Booth Lake, the lake district's 2002 ordinance requires septic inspections, so a lake home should come with an inspection record. Everywhere else, I would test the well, have the septic inspected and pumped, and confirm the permitted bedroom count with the county before closing. That is standard advice for rural property in Illinois too, and in a town where the lakes and fens depend on clean groundwater, it carries more weight.

Garbage and recycling are collected weekly on Fridays by John's Disposal under a town contract, with carts at the road by 6:00 a.m. and bulky pickup by appointment, according to the town FAQ. Town residents can also use the Town of East Troy compost site on Highway L, open Saturdays from April through December.

Most of the Town of Troy is in the East Troy Community School District. The DOR's 2025 school data puts about $491 million of Troy's taxable value in the East Troy district and about $34 million in the Elkhorn Area School District, so roughly 93% of the town's value, and most homes, are in East Troy. A school district line can split a road, so check the tax bill for any address and confirm with the district before you write an offer.

The East Troy district runs Little Prairie Primary School, Prairie View Elementary School, East Troy Middle School and East Troy High School. In April 2026, voters rejected a $4 million-a-year operating referendum, 2,779 to 1,757, after a 2023 operating referendum expired. The district reports enrollment down 104 students since 2023-24 and is now working on a long-term funding plan with a resident committee. Buyers should follow how that plays out.

The Elkhorn Area School District serves the town's southwestern edge from Elkhorn, about 20 minutes away by my routing estimate.

Troy is a car town. WI-20 crosses the north side, County Road J runs through Troy Center, and I-43's East Troy exits are a few minutes east. I ran free-flow routing estimates on OSRM from Troy Center in October 2026; they assume no traffic.

From Troy Center, Vernon Hills, Illinois is about 60 miles and 81 minutes, and the Loop about 95 miles and just over two hours. Downtown Milwaukee is about 40 miles and 53 minutes, and Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport about 36 miles and 50 minutes. Elkhorn is about 13 miles and 22 minutes, and Waukesha about 26 miles and 38 minutes. From Booth Lake, on the east side of town, every trip toward Milwaukee or Illinois is a few minutes shorter.

For rail, the Amtrak Hiawatha runs seven round trips a day between Milwaukee and Chicago Union Station (six on Sundays) in about 90 minutes. Its Milwaukee Airport station is about 36 miles and 49 minutes from Troy Center. Metra's Harvard station on the Union Pacific Northwest line is about 33 miles and 49 minutes away, and Fox Lake on the Milwaukee District North line about 42 miles and 52 minutes.

WisDOT's I-43 Rock Freeway project will replace about 9.8 miles of pavement between Bowers Road and WIS 83, past East Troy. Preparation started the week of October 5, 2026, with overnight lane and ramp closures; major work begins in spring 2027 and should finish in summer 2029.

The town hall and the Troy Center Fire Department share N8870 Briggs Street. The fire department traces back to 1914, when Troy Center residents raised money by subscription for a chemical fire engine mounted on a Ford truck chassis and organized a volunteer company that served the whole town. It is still led by a volunteer chief and officers today.

Police service comes from the Walworth County Sheriff's Office in Elkhorn, listed on the town's services page. The town has a building inspector, a contract assessor and a county code enforcement officer for zoning. The town hall is open Monday through Thursday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and property tax installments go to the Walworth County Treasurer after January 31, with the second installment due July 31.

The nearest hospital with a 24-hour emergency department is Aurora Lakeland Medical Center on County Road NN in Elkhorn, roughly 20 minutes from Troy Center by my routing estimate.

Troy has no shopping district of its own; daily errands run to the Village of East Troy, a short drive east, or to Elkhorn and Mukwonago. The village square has restaurants, a brewery and summer concerts, and the East Troy Railroad Museum runs trolleys from the village to The Elegant Farmer in Mukwonago. My East Troy guide covers the square, the railroad and Lake Beulah.

To the south, in the Town of LaFayette, Alpine Valley Resort) runs 21 ski trails on about 90 skiable acres, and the Alpine Valley Music Theatre next door hosts large summer concerts. On a show night, County Road D and the nearby roads fill with traffic, so a buyer on Troy's south side should drive the route on a concert evening.

The outdoors is Troy's real amenity: the Lulu Lake trails, Booth Lake Memorial Park's beach in a normal year, Pickerel Lake Fen, and the Kettle Moraine country to the north and northeast.

Troy changes slowly by design. The county plan the town adopted in 2009 aims to keep urban development compact and farmland and resource land intact. The one zoning notice I found on the town's 2026 postings was a rezone to allow a lot line adjustment on County Road J. I found no large subdivision or commercial project on the town's 2026 notices.

The changes that matter in 2026 are public-works and fiscal ones. The I-43 reconstruction east of town starts in earnest in spring 2027. The Troy Center Sanitary District finished system upgrades in 2025 and is refunding a fire protection fee. The town board proposed exceeding its levy limit in September 2026, which goes to a town meeting. And Booth Lake's recovery plan, after the August closure, will be the biggest local story for any lake owner.

On the land side, the Mukwonago River restoration work led by The Nature Conservancy continues next door in Waukesha County, and preserved acreage around Lulu Lake keeps the northeast corner of town from developing at all.

The Town of Troy has no police department of its own; the Walworth County Sheriff's Office in Elkhorn provides police service, and the town's water patrol covers Booth and Lulu lakes in season. I don't characterize the safety of any town or neighborhood. If you want the data, contact the Sheriff's Office or look it up yourself in the FBI's Crime Data Explorer.