The Painted Forest is a simple white frame building set on a hillside in the small community of Valton, Wisconsin, in the Upper Baraboo River country.  Its treasure lies inside—where the walls and ceiling are covered with visionary and intriguing murals painted in the late 1890s by an itinerant self-taught German painter, Ernest Hüpeden.

The village of Valton, in the northwest corner of Sauk County, was settled before the Civil War.  A mill was built there in 1857, and the village grew during the last half of the 19th century as businesses and churches were built.  Later, Valton gradually declined in population, as did many other small Wisconsin communities.
        
Today Valton’s fame rests in its being home to one of the oldest Quaker churches in Wisconsin and to the remarkable folk art museum, the Painted Forest.