Where Is Friendship, Wisconsin? Not the Fond du Lac One

Ask a map where is Friendship, Wisconsin, and it may hand you two answers, because the state has two places with that name. The one most visitors want is the village in Adams County, in the middle of the state, about 65 miles north of Madison on WIS-13 and two miles south of Roche-A-Cri State Park.

It is a village of 648 people and the county seat, small enough to walk from one end of Main Street to the other, and it runs straight into its twin village, Adams, to the south.

Where is Friendship, Wisconsin?

Friendship is in central Wisconsin, in Adams County, at 43°58′N, 89°49′W. It sits on WIS-13 about 65 miles north of Madison, 24 miles north of downtown Wisconsin Dells and 28 miles south of Wisconsin Rapids, all in straight lines.

The village covers less than a square mile, at an elevation of 955 feet, on the flat sand plain of central Wisconsin, the Central Sands, which was the bed of Glacial Lake Wisconsin. The mounds around it were islands in that lake. Its ZIP code is 53934, the area code is 608, and it runs on Central Time.

Which Friendship? The village and the town

Wisconsin has a village of Friendship in Adams County and a town of Friendship in Fond du Lac County, and they are 68 miles apart. They are unrelated places, and the difference matters if you are booking a stay or setting a GPS.

The town of Friendship is a rural township of 2,748 people next to the city of Fond du Lac, with area codes 920 and 274. The village of Friendship is the Adams County seat, with 648 people, ZIP code 53934 and area code 608. If an address says 53934, or the phone number starts with 608, it is this one.

One more wrinkle: the ZIP code 53934 covers far more than the village. Lake houses and bars seven miles out on the east shore of Castle Rock Lake carry Friendship addresses too, so an address that says Friendship may still be a drive from Main Street.

Adams and Friendship, the twin villages

Friendship and its twin village of Adams are separate villages that run into each other along Main Street, with Adams about a mile to the south. They share a school district, the Adams-Friendship Area School District, which is why you will often see the two names joined.

Friendship holds the county seat, and Adams has more of the shops and services. Some of the area's longest-standing places to eat are on the Adams end of Main Street, among them Becky’s bakery on South Main, so most visitors move between the two without noticing the line.

Getting here by road

WIS-13 is the main road through Friendship, running straight through the village north to south, and WIS-21 crosses it just north of town.

Coming from the south, you arrive through Adams and straight onto Main Street. From the north, WIS-13 brings you past Inn of the Pines and then Roche-A-Cri State Park before you reach town, and the junction with WIS-21 is marked by the diner at the WIS-21 junction, 3.8 miles north of the village.

Winter is the main caveat for driving here. Friendship averages 52 inches of snow a year, most of it between December and February, so check Friendship’s winter road weather before a December trip and keep a scraper in the car.

How far is Friendship from…?

These are straight-line distances from the village center, measured from coordinates rather than road routes, so the drive will always be longer.

Madison is the nearest big city. Milwaukee and Chicago are both well over 100 miles away in a straight line, so from either one Friendship works better as a weekend than a day trip.

Flying in

The nearest airport with scheduled flights is Central Wisconsin Airport (CWA), 56 miles north of Friendship. Adams County Airport (63C) serves Friendship and the surrounding communities for private and general aviation.

Madison's airport, about 65 miles south, is the other realistic choice. Either way you will need a car, because there is no public transit into Friendship and the things worth seeing are spread out over several miles.

Landmarks you will see on the way in

The first thing you notice is the mounds. Friendship Mound sits just north of the village, a castellated hill left by the last glaciers, and two miles farther north is Roche-A-Cri, the bigger one with the stairway.

Roche-A-Cri’s sandstone mound rises about 300 feet above the plain, with Wisconsin's only publicly accessible rock art at its base, and it is the reason a lot of people find Friendship on a map in the first place.

A little history

Friendship was incorporated as a village on March 30, 1907. The census counted 76 people here in 1870, 566 by 1950 and a peak of 744 in 1980, and 648 at the 2020 census.

Among the people Wikipedia lists from Friendship are three Wisconsin state representatives and Len Koenecke, a former Major League Baseball player. For village services and meeting notices, the official website is friendshipwi.gov.

As county seat, Friendship is where Adams County's government sits, and the Adams County Fair is held on the fairground on the village's west side every August.

What's here once you arrive

Once you are in Friendship, the stay options are close by. Inn of the Pines is on WIS-13 north of the village, and there are lakeside cabins on Friendship Lake and campgrounds at Roche-A-Cri and Castle Rock Park.