Iron County, Wisconsin

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

County Seat: Hurley
Year Organized: 1893
Square Miles: 757

Court House:

300 Taconite Street
County Courthouse
Hurley, WI 54534-1546

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Iron County was named for the amount of this ore to be found within its limits -- Gannett, Place Names, p. 144.

[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

History

Iron was created on March 1, 1893 from Ashland County. The County Seat is Hurley.

In the late 1660's, with beaver hats the rage in Europe, Native Americans and French and English fur traders traveled through Iron County on the Flambeau Trail, linking European markets to the much desired Northern Wisconsin commodity. Native Americans traded locally-mined copper internationally via this wilderness "highway" trail.

The 1800's brought the lumbermen, and Iron County's white pine resources provided valuable lumber needed to build homes in growing industrial cities. Railroad logging, development my timber barons like William Roddis, next moved hardwoods to waiting mills. As the timber was exhausted, lumber companies converted their land holdings to capture more revenues. Where there were lakes, resorts sprang up in the cutover, providing destinations for city vacationers. Immigrants, eager to farm their own land, settled the cutover.

Iron County's iron mining history had a unique and profound impact. "Red Gold" drew immigrants here since the 1880's, to mine the iron ore needed by a growing industrial America. Through the extraction of iron from the hills of Northern Iron County's Penokee Range, Wisconsin made significant contributions to the fast moving industrial revolution of the world, particularly in production of steel, building materials and automobiles. By the mid-1960's, iron mining ceased and Iron County turned to tourism, successfully establishing itself as a major downhill skiing and snowmobiling destination in Wisconsin and the Midwest. Today, Iron County's natural and historic resources make it an important four-season tourism destination in Wisconsin. As a Wisconsin Heritage Area, it a "living" example of how the interaction of its people, with its resources, influenced Wisconsin's place in the national and international community.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 919 square miles (2,381 km²), of which, 757 square miles (1,961 km²) of it is land and 162 square miles (420 km²) of it (17.62%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Vilas County - east, southeast
Price County - southwest
Ashland County - west
Gogebic County, Michigan - northeast

Cities and Towns:

- Anderson	town
- Carey	town
- Gurney	town
- Hurley (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Kimball	town
- Knight	town
- Mercer	town
- Montreal	city	Incorporated Area
- Oma	town
- Pence	town
- Saxon	town

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resource Guide

Counties: US Map

The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of our 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."

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