Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin

Wisconsin Rapids is a city in and the county seat of Wood County, Wisconsin, United States, along the Wisconsin River. The population was 18,877 at the 2020 census. It is a principal city of the Marshfield–Wisconsin Rapids micropolitan statistical area, which includes all of Wood County and had a population of 74,207 in 2020.

The city was established in the late 1830s as the series of rapids along the Wisconsin River provided good sites for water-driven sawmills, and nearby forests held pine lumber to be sawed and floated down the river. After the lumber dwindled, the waterpower drove electric generators and various other enterprises–particularly paper mills.

The Menominee claimed the big rapids in the forest prior to European settlement, with Ojibwe and Ho-Chunk lands nearby. They called the place "Ah-dah-wah-gam" meaning "Two-sided Rapids" because the rapids were split by a large chunk of rock. In 1836, the Menominee ceded this land, along with more land to the east, to the U.S. in the Treaty of the Cedars. This particular land cession was a strip spanning three miles on either side of the Wisconsin River, starting at Point Basse and reaching 48 miles (77 km) upstream to Big Bull Falls – the future site of Wausau. The U.S. negotiators pressed the Menominee for this strip before the surrounding lands because it held prime pine timber and was within easy reach of the river.

In 1832, Daniel Whitney had built a sawmill 10 miles (16 km) downstream, across from modern Nekoosa. Whitney's operation demonstrated the feasibility of rafting lumber to markets downstream. When the treaty of 1836 made the strip along the Wisconsin River available, lumbermen rushed in exploring for mill sites, and by 1839 (when Wisconsin was still a territory) two water-powered sawmills were running at the future Wisconsin Rapids, when a surveyor described the site as a "succession of rapids & chutes called the Grand Rapids", with two "extensive lumbering establishments thereon owned by Bloomer, Chamberlain, Adams, Strong, Hill & others, now in operation."

The first house in Rapids was a small log cabin built by H. McCutcheon, a cook for Strong and Bloomer's mill. The second came soon after when Nelson Strong built a frame house for himself with boards sawed at his mill - the first frame house in Rapids, built in 1838. Rapids' first church services were conducted by visiting Catholic priests in 1837. In 1842 a Methodist missionary J.S. Hurlburt began ministering too, visiting homes by foot or horseback. He also started a primary school in a log cabin in the early 1840s. The first hotel came in 1843 and the first blacksmith shop in 1844. A post office named Grand Rapids opened in 1845, with mail carried in once a week. Pioneer J.L. Cotey later wrote an account of the early sawmill town as it stood in 1846. He described a community of "130 males and 17 females," with businesses along a slough crossed by a temporary slab bridge, frame homes and log houses and barns, picturesque pine trees, a sawmill with two up-and-down saws, boarding houses and saloons for the workers at the mills, and a stopping place for loggers headed upstream. Across the river on the west side was another sawmill, three frame houses for the men who worked in the sawmill, two shingle shanties, and a block house. At that time supplies were hauled overland to Rapids by ox and wagon from Galena, which took three weeks. (The Jones reference gives Cotey's full account.)

The business of this ramshackle wilderness outpost was lumber. In the 6-mile strip along the river, lumberjacks working from winter logging camps felled the prized pine trees. They limbed the trees and cut them into 12 to 18-foot logs, then skidded the logs with oxen and horses to rivers and stream banks where they were stored until spring. During spring floods the logs were driven downstream, and, if all went well, captured in booms of the sawmills at Grand Rapids. The sawmills pulled the logs in and sawed them into boards. Some of the boards went into drying piles for local use, but the majority were destined for distant markets like Portage, Dubuque, and St. Louis. These were stacked along the river, then bound into 16 by 16-foot "cribs" of boards. When the river was running well (generally spring) six or seven of these cribs were joined into a "rapids piece" - a 100-foot long, flexible raft suited to running the rocky rapids of the upper Wisconsin River. Of those rapids, Grand Rapids was one of the most dangerous. Before today's placid, flat reservoir, the river surged through a series of rapids a mile long, and rafts had to run when the water was high. In early years that passage was aided by wing dams to focus the current; in later years dams across the river provided chutes for the rafts to plunge down, with spectators watching from the bank. The rafts that succeeded in passing the rapids regrouped at Point Basse and joined three of the rapids-piece rafts side by side into a "Wisconsin raft" for the rest of the Wisconsin River, which was less turbulent. Then at the Mississippi the Wisconsin rafts were joined into huge "Mississippi rafts" for the final leg to Dubuque or St. Louis.

In 1848 another treaty with Indians opened most of northern Wisconsin to loggers and settlers, which allowed access to much more timber outside the three-mile strip along the river. In 1856 Grand Rapids became the county seat of the new Wood County when it was split out of Portage County. The town was growing. A promotional booklet in 1857 reported Grand Rapids' population at about 1,000. It reported eight sawmills from Grand Rapids down to Point Basse, plus six steam-powered mills - all producing 19 million board feet of lumber per year, plus around 42 million shingles. Rapids consisted of 187 buildings including homes and a Catholic church, two public schools, a drug store, five general stores, six variety stores, five taverns (probably meaning inns), two saloons, two lawyers, three blacksmiths, two carpenter shops, two shoe shops, a wagonmakers' shop, two tailors, a cabinet maker, a bakery, two lawyers and two doctors. In 1857 the first newspaper began publication - the Wood County Reporter. Mrs. Clarice Arpin later gave her impression of the town when she arrived about 1859: "a rough lumbering town, filled with lumberjacks who engaged in many drunken brawls, and Indians, who when they had an over-supply of firewater yelled and danced in the middle of the streets."

The first plat of part of the Rapids had been made in 1847, with others following. Growth slowed during the American Civil War, when some of the workers left to fight in the Union Army. A bad flood in 1864 and a fire in the business district in 1865 were other setbacks. In 1869 Grand Rapids incorporated as a city. Its first order of business was to require a license to sell liquor. Shortly after, city officials were elected, including Dr. G.F. Witter to "doctor city poor for the sum of $75 per year." A ban on selling liquor on Sunday was passed, and a ban on running hogs loose in the city.