Grantsburg, WI

Grantsburg is Burnett County's seat, a Wood River village whose present-day water map is Memory Lake, the small flowage created by a dam at the west edge of town. Canute Anderson got the settlement moving in the 1850s with a mill, hotel, and store; the railroad arrived in 1884, and the village incorporated in 1886. That old transportation story now shares the calendar with watercross: snowmobile racers skim Memory Lake each July during the International Watercross Association championship. The village also keeps its history close, with an 1870 county jail and a 1897 Norwegian Methodist church preserved at the local museum. Grantsburg is river town, county seat, and race day all at once.