Rusk County, Wisconsin: History
The forested wilderness that would become Rusk County was home to different Indian nations over the years. Some used the rivers to pass through, some camped, some buried their dead there. In 1767, English explorer Jonathan Carver was the first recorded European to visit what would become Rusk County, ascending the Chippewa River on his way from the Mississippi to Lac Courte Oreilles and Lake Superior. In 1790 Lakota warriors came up the Chippewa to attack the Ojibwe, but they were defeated, leaving the Ojibwe in control through the fur trade era.
The first loggers and settlers came up the Chippewa River from the south, entering what would become Rusk County north of modern Holcombe, where the Flambeau River joins the Chippewa. An Indian settlement lay on the bank of the Chippewa near where St. Francis of Assisi Mission Church stands.
European-American settlement began near that Indian village in 1847, when Adolph La Ronge and his wife came from Canada. By the 1860s the Daniel Shaw Lumber Company had a farm two miles west (across from modern Flater's Resort) to support their operations.
Loggers initially went up the rivers and cut the choicest pine in winter, then drove masses of logs down to sawmills in Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire on the spring and early summer floods. At first they poled supplies up the rivers in bateaux, but later cut "tote roads" to haul supplies with oxen and horses to their remote logging camps.
One of these early tote roads was the Chippewa Trail, which followed west of the Chippewa from the south end of the county to the north end near Exeland, and beyond. Another trail called "The 101 Tote Road" followed up the Flambeau River. In 1872 there was no Ladysmith, but by then the trail reached Bruno Vinette's farm on the river a mile above the future Ladysmith, and another logging outpost called Hackett's Farm 20 miles beyond, on the Flambeau north of modern Hawkins. Another tote road reached Vinette's farm from the south, through what would become the Town of Grow. By 1880 the Chippewa Trail was developed into a stage road, with a horse-drawn stage running up it one day and back down the next. Stopping places (rough inns) were located about every five miles, where lumberjacks could rest and carouse on their way to and from the camps. An 1888 map of Chippewa County shows more roads, including one to Flambeau Falls (Ladysmith).
Railroads reached the area in 1884. The Mississippi River Logging Company brought in a locomotive, cars and rails by sleigh from Bloomer to start a logging railroad. Weyerhaueser's company had tried driving logs down the streams from the Potato Lake and Soft Maple areas, but the streams proved too small, so they laid track and hauled logs to Big Bend, then rolled them into the Chippewa. As the timber in that area was cut off, this railroad, named the Chippewa River and Menomonie Railroad, shifted operations, moving its rails north of Bruce.
That same year the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad (the Soo Line) started building its railroad across the area, aiming to connect the grain of the Twin Cities with the shipping at Sault Ste. Marie. The two railroads met west of Bruce at a place called Apollonia. In the 1890s the CR&M had shops and an engine house there and Apollonia grew to 350 people - the largest town at that time in the current bounds of Rusk County. …