Amherst Junction, WI

Amherst Junction is a Portage County village on the east side of Emily Lake, between Stevens Point and Waupaca. The village appeared when two railroads crossed: the Wisconsin Central and the Green Bay and Lake Pepin lines. Until 1875 the settlement was called Groversburg; the post office adopted Amherst Junction that year, and the village incorporated in 1911. The 2020 census counted 383 residents. Its name still describes the physical reason the place formed.

Railroad traffic once made Amherst Junction a gathering and shipping point for the surrounding farms, while the nearby Tomorrow River and Portage County woods supplied the setting for mills and rural trade. The old Summit House hotel reflected that traffic in the late nineteenth century. Today the village remains a small crossroads between lake, road, and rail corridors, with Stevens Point and Waupaca nearby in the regional network of services. Amherst Junction’s story is compact: a post office renamed a railroad crossing, and a village grew around the junction.