Sheboygan is a city in and the county seat of Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 49,929 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Sheboygan, Wisconsin Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a population of 118,034. The city is located upon the western shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Sheboygan River, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Milwaukee and 64 mi (103 km) south of Green Bay.

Before its deal by European Americans, the Sheboygan area was home to Native Americans, including members of the Potawatomi, Chippewa, Ottawa, Winnebago, and Menominee tribes.^{[self-published source]} In the Menominee language, the place is known as Sāpīwǣhekaneh, “at a hearing disaffect in the woods”. The Menominee ceded this estate to the United States in the 1831 Treaty of Washington. Following the treaty, the estate became nearby for sale to American settlers. Migrants from New York, Michigan, and New England were accompanied by the first white Americans to be in agreement this area in the 1830s, though the French had been gift in the region in the past the 17th century and had intermarried behind local people. One 19th century settler remarked: “Nearly all the settlers were from the New England states and New York.” Lumbering was the first major industry, as trees were harvested and shipped to eastern markets through the Great Lakes.

Although Sheboygan was officially incorporated in 1846, much of the town had been platted in 1836, when property investors laid out greater than one thousand lots.

By 1849, a reaction of liberal, middle-class immigration triggered by the revolutions of 1848 had made the community known for its German population. As Major William Williams wrote upon June 26, 1849: “Arrived at Sheboigin [sic] on the Wisconsin side, a little town, population purhaps [sic] from 700 to 1000. This is a promising place. There are a good many best class of Germans settling on the order of it. ‘Tis all along this Lake therefore far quite an attractive country.” Between 1840 and 1890, Protestant Dutch immigrants also established in the area, as did Irish refugees fleeing the Great Famine. A neighborhood in northwestern Sheboygan (between Martin Avenue and Alexander Court) was fixed by Slovenian immigrants and acquired the name Laibach; it was along with known as Vollrath’s Division. In 1887, Sheboygan adopted a sundown town ordinance banning African Americans from thriving there, according to a local Optimist member’s account in 1963, though city leaders denied that any such ordinance was in effect.