Crivitz, WI

Crivitz is a Marinette County village on the Peshtigo River, part of the Marinette–Menominee micropolitan area. The 2020 census counted 1,093 residents. The village sits between railroad tracks and the river, with Lake Noquebay, Peshtigo River State Forest, and Tommy Thompson Centennial Park shaping the surrounding map. Fishing, snowmobiling, hunting, river sports, and the businesses that support them are part of the local economy. The Peshtigo River links the village to a forest-and-marsh landscape that extends well beyond the municipal boundary to the north.

Crivitz was surveyed and platted in the summer of 1883 by Frederick John Bartels, a German immigrant who named the settlement after his hometown. Logging and sawmills drove the early economy, and a typhoid epidemic in 1894 helped end that period as the mills shut down. The village’s working identity shifted toward services and outdoor businesses, but the old pattern remains visible: railroad land, river corridors, forest roads, and a compact village serving the northwoods communities around it.