Forestville, WI

Forestville is a Door County village set within the separate Town of Forestville, and the two municipalities are politically independent. The village center sits along Highway 42, while the wider town reaches into the farm country and wooded roads of the peninsula. That split matters here: a place can carry one name while having two local governments, two sets of responsibilities, and a shared landscape shaped by the old mill economy.

The nearby Forestville Dam gives the area one of its most tangible pieces of history. An earthen dam built in 1877 powered a gristmill that processed grain from across Door County. The mill closed around 1920 after the dam washed out; a replacement dam followed in 1934 as a Works Progress Administration project. The town bought the dam and grounds in 1949 for a park, then transferred them to Door County in 1963. Today Forestville Dam County Park preserves that water-and-mill story, while the village remains the smaller municipal center within the larger town.