Forest County, Wisconsin

Forest County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Crandon
Year Organized: 1885
Square Miles: 1,014

Court House:

200 East Madison Street
County Courthouse
Crandon, WI 54520-1415

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Forest County was named for the dense forest with which it was covered when erected - Gannett, Place Names, p. 112.

[Source: Kellogg, Louise Phelps. "Derivation of County Names" in Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for 1909, pages 219-231.]

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

The Forest County Potawatomi Community and the Sokaogon Chippewa Community have reservations in Forest County.

A Capsule of Forest County History

Before the Civil War, Forest County was primarily inhabited by the Chippewa and other Native Americans, and was visited by traveling fur traders and trappers, most of whom were of French descent or mixed French and Indian heritage.

During the 1860’s, the federal government started construction of what is known as the Military Road. This road connected Green Bay and Fort Wilkins at Copper Harbor on the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. Previously, rivers had served as the highways to this section of northeastern Wisconsin. Military Road made travel through Forest County easier, but marketing of its principal resource, hardwood timber, had to wait for improved markets for hardwood lumber and rail service to transport the lumber. Unlike the pine that was logged elsewhere, the heavier hardwood logs would not float in the rivers to sawmills downstate.

The Soo Line Railroad bisected Forest County in 1887, and provided rail service to areas adjacent to Argonne, Cavour, and Armstrong Creek, but it was still not profitable to move logs by horse-drawn sleigh for any distance to a railhead. Eventually, the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, lured by land holdings given to them by the government, pushed rail service into the county. It created a north-south line on the eastern side of the county in the 1890s with a spur into Crandon just after the turn of the century. Sawmills sprang up like mushrooms after a rain and lumber was shipped to build America’s cities. By the 1930s, the timber supply waned and the Great Depression shut down most of the big mills. It was then that residents of what came to be called the “cutover lands” realized the value of the many lakes and miles of streams located in Forest County. The tourist trade joined logging and saw milling as part of the economic mainstay of the North, and it remains so today.

Article Originally Published by
www.visitforestcounty.com

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 1,046 square miles (2,710 km²), of which, 1,014 square miles (2,626 km²) of it is land and 32 square miles (84 km²) of it (3.09%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Florence County - northeast
Marinette County - east
Oconto County - southeast
Langlade County - southwest
Oneida County - west
Vilas County - northwest
Iron County, Michigan - north

Cities and Towns:

- Argonne	town
- Armstrong Creek	town
- Blackwell	town
- Caswell	town
- Crandon (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Hiles	town
- Laona	town
- Lincoln	town
- Nashville	town
- Ross	town
- Wabeno	town

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."