St. Croix County, Wisconsin: History
St. Croix County was created on August 3, 1840, by the legislature of the Wisconsin Territory. It was named after the river on its western border. Sources vary on the name's origin. The St. Croix River may have been named after an explorer named St. Croix who drowned at the river's mouth in the late 17th century. According to another account, Father Hennepin gave this region the French name Ste Croix (Holy Cross) because of the burial markers at the river's mouth.
La Pointe County (now extinct, see Bayfield County) was created from the northern portions of Wisconsin Territory's St. Croix County on February 19, 1845. When Wisconsin was admitted into the union as a state on May 29, 1848, the territorial St. Croix County was further divided, with the territory from the Mississippi River to the Minnesota border remaining de facto Wisconsin Territory until on March 3, 1849, it and unorganized federal territory north of Iowa were used in the creation of the Minnesota Territory. Itasca, Washington, Ramsey and Benton Counties were created by the Minnesota Territory on October 27, 1849, from the de facto Wisconsin Territory that had been separated from the Wisconsin Territory's La Pointe County.
The part of St. Croix County allocated to Wisconsin became the parental county to Pierce and Polk Counties, and formed significant portions of Dunn, Barron, Washburn and Burnett Counties.
On June 12, 1899, a deadly F5 tornado struck New Richmond. The tornado's damage path was 400 yards (370 m) wide and 46 miles (74 km) long. The tornado formed on the banks of the St. Croix River, south of Hudson. Moving to the northeast across St. Croix County, the tornado passed through the villages of Burkhardt and Boardman before striking New Richmond head on, leveling the entire business district and half the town's residences. The storm continued northeast, narrowly missing the town of Deer Park before crossing into Polk County, where it narrowly missed the towns of Clear Lake, Richardson, and Clayton. Once the tornado passed into Barron County, it struck the village of Arland before breaking up southwest of Barron. The tornado killed 117 people (four at Boardman, two in Polk County, and the rest at New Richmond), including at least 20 people who died from their injuries in the days after the storm. Largely thanks to state aid and donations, most of the town was rebuilt by the next winter. The tornado was the deadliest ever recorded in Wisconsin and the 9th deadliest tornado in U.S. history.