Major Elbert Dickason, founder of Wyocena, was born in Virginia in 1799 and later moved to Illinois, where he joined the militia during the Black Hawk War. Representing a Milwaukee land investor, he founded Columbus in 1839. After his ventures failed in 1843, he moved with his wife Obedience and family to Wyocena, where he purchased land for $1.25 per acre, built a cabin, and surveyed, platted, and named the future settlement. His log cabin became a refuge for many land buyers who flocked to the area in the 1840s. In 1846, he began building a two-story frame hotel to accommodate them, but he died in 1848 before it was completed, and his relatives finished the structure. The hotel was eventually sold to Columbia County as the county's first home for the mentally impaired and the poor, and it served in that role for over 100 years.