Medford

History

Medford is located on historic Ojibwe forest land acquired by the United States in the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters. In 1864, the federal government authorized a grant of some of this land to subsidize railway construction through the area. The Wisconsin Central Railroad Company, controlled by Boston financier Gardner Colby, obtained the land grant and constructed the railroad in the 1870s. The railroad company and a local lumber milling company laid out the city of Medford in 1875 and sold lots for twenty-five dollars each. The railroad named the new settlement after Medford, Massachusetts, the hometown of a railroad official. Medford shipped over 1.5 million board feet of lumber by rail within a year of its establishment, The Wisconsin Legislature organized Taylor County in 1875 and named Medford the county seat, leading to a dispute between the Wisconsin Central Railroad and the mill company over the location of the courthouse. The Taylor County Courthouse was ultimately constructed on land donated by the railroad company. In the 1960s and 1970s, Medford hosted an annual mink festival, celebrating the town's claim to be the "Mink capital of the world." Fur farms in the area make Taylor County a top mink producer in North America. During the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020, thousands of mink died of the virus after having contracted it from human workers.