Couderay

History

The name Couderay is a truncated name of French origin denoting the term "short ears" (courtes oreilles) in connection with those of the Ojibwa people. French explorers and French-Canadian trappers who roamed the northern part of French Louisiana and the Great Lakes at the time of New France created this name. Logging of the pine along the Couderay River and its tributaries began in the 1800s. In those early years, logs were driven down the river to the Chippewa, and eventually to Chippewa Falls, Eau Claire, and beyond to be sawed. In 1902 Levi Felton and P.M. Parker built a sawmill on Eddy Creek, on the east side of what would become Couderay. The following year the Omaha Railroad built its track through Couderay, providing a means to haul the sawed lumber to markets. A little mill-town grew up around the depot and mills. In boom years the mills employed 150, and the town had general stores, billiard and soft drink halls, a restaurant, a barber, a potato warehouse, a four-room two-story primary school, a Presbyterian church and a Catholic church. In the 1920s and 1930s Chicago gangster Al Capone had a home on a private lake five miles north of Couderay - now a tourist site called "The Hideout." The Hideout was purchased in the spring of 2010 by the Lac Courte Oreilles Indian Tribe after bankruptcy hearings for the previous owners. The mills have long since closed, many people moved out, and the railroad line was finally abandoned in 1965, then converted to the Tuscobia State Trail. It now runs through town parallel to highway 27/70, with tourists occasionally stopping.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of , of which is land and is water. On February 2, and February 4, 1996, the temperature fell to −55 °F (−48 °C), the coldest temperature ever recorded in Wisconsin.

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  603
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  594
• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  564
• Bald Eagle

  Haliaeetus leucocephalus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  530
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  485
• White-breasted Nuthatch

  Sitta carolinensis Latham, 1790 · Aves
  443
• Red-eyed Vireo

  Vireo olivaceus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  418
• Common Loon

  Gavia immer (Brunnich, 1764) · Aves
  403