Vilas County ( ) is a county in the state of Wisconsin, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 23,047. The county partly overlaps the reservation of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The county is considered a high-recreation retirement destination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
History
Native Americans
Native Americans have lived in what is now Vilas County for thousands of years. The county contains archaeological sites dating to the prehistoric Woodland period. In the eighteenth century, the area was disputed by the Dakota and Ojibwe people. According to oral histories, the conflict culminated in Ojibwe victory in a battle on Strawberry Island in Flambeau Lake around 1745. Ojibwe people have continued to live in the area ever since, securing the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation in the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe.
Settlement
The first recorded white settler was a man named Ashman who established a trading post in Lac du Flambeau in 1818.
In the 1850s migrants from New England, primarily from Vermont and Connecticut, constructed wagon roads and trails through Vilas County including the Ontonagan Mail Trail and a military road from Fort Howard to Fort Wilkins in Copper Harbor, Michigan.
Logging era
Logging began in the late 1850s. Loggers came from Cortland County, New York, Carroll County, New Hampshire, Orange County, Vermont and Down East Maine in what is now Washington County, Maine and Hancock County, Maine. Many dams were built throughout the county to assist loggers as they sent their timber downstream to the lumber and paper mills in the Wisconsin River valley. There are 1,318 lakes in the county. Much of Vilas County is covered by the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest and the Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest as well as extensive county forest lands. Vilas County waters drain to Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and the Mississippi River. The Wisconsin, Flambeau, and Presque Isle Rivers all find their headwaters in Vilas County.
Adjacent counties
- Forest County - southeast
- Iron County - west
- Oneida County - south
- Price County - southwest
- Gogebic County, Michigan - north
- Iron County, Michigan - northeast
Major highways
- 20px U.S. Highway 45
- 20px U.S. Highway 51
- 20px Highway 17 (Wisconsin)
- 20px Highway 32 (Wisconsin)
- 20px Highway 47 (Wisconsin)
- 20px Highway 70 (Wisconsin)
- 20px Highway 155 (Wisconsin)
Buses
Airports
- KARV - Lakeland Airport / Noble F. Lee Memorial Field
- KEGV - Eagle River Union Airport
- KLNL - Kings Land O' Lakes Airport
- D25 - Manitowish Waters Airport
National protected areas
- Chequamegon National Forest (part)
- Nicolet National Forest (part)
Although these two forests have been administratively combined into the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, the county contains portions of both original forests.