Athens, WI

Most of Athens' story is a handoff from lumber to agriculture. The Marathon County village grew around timber operations and the Abbotsford North-Eastern Railroad, a local line built from Abbotsford to Athens in 1889 and later dismantled in 1971. By the early 1900s, sawmills, planing mills, a flour mill, cheese factory, shops, churches, and schools filled out the village's working map. Today State Highway 97 runs through a community still surrounded by farm country, with Athens School District's elementary, middle, and high schools serving as a central institution. Athens is a village where the old rail grade, the farm economy, and the school campus sit on top of a lumber-town past.