Port Edwards, WI

Port Edwards is a village in Wood County on the Wisconsin River, immediately northeast of the Town of Port Edwards. The settlement was first known as Frenchtown and grew around a sawmill associated with John Edwards and Henry Clinton; in 1869, it took the Edwards name. That lumber beginning led into a much longer paper-making chapter. Mills along the river shaped work and the village's connection to the neighboring communities of Nekoosa and Wisconsin Rapids, and the Nekoosa-Edwards Paper Company became one of the region's major industrial firms. The mill closed in 2008, leaving Port Edwards with a story that is as much about industrial change as it is about founding dates. Today the village and town remain separate governments sharing the same name and river setting. Port Edwards is a Wisconsin River place where Frenchtown, sawmills, paper, and a modern village map are all part of the same local shorthand.