Poplar, WI

Poplar is a Douglas County village on U.S. 2, County Road D, and County Road P, about 18 miles east of Superior. The 2020 census counted 629 residents. The Maple School District serves the area, with Northwestern Elementary and Northwestern Middle School in Poplar. Village hall, wastewater operations, a fire department, and county roads cover the local civic map, while Superior supplies larger shopping, medical, and county services. The village sits where northern Wisconsin’s forest country meets the highway routes around the Head of the Lakes.

Poplar became a village in 1917 as railroad development and the timber economy pulled people into Douglas County. That past still shows in the way the place works: a school campus, highway businesses, village maintenance, and nearby forest land rather than a dense downtown. Poplar’s school history also reaches back to earlier rural education, and today the district keeps elementary, middle, and high school life tied to the surrounding communities. It is a small village, but not a place cut off from the regional map.