Excerpted from The Romance of Wisconsin Place Names by Robert Gard. Contributed by Jon Angeli.
Robert Gard’s second edition of The Romance of Wisconsin Place Names was released in 2015. The first edition was published in 1968. UW-Extension Agents broadly supported the project across the state. Some got into it, some not so much. Apparently, the Crawford County agent got into it because just about every obscure ridge and hollow in Crawford County is on it.
The Grant County effort was pretty good. Though they missed Arthur and its original name, Washburn, (unless they missed the county entirely because Arthur is listed under Chippewa County—“named for President Chester A. Arthur”), there are locations that have unlikely stories (like Lancaster) and there are others we have never heard of, like the Halfway Spot, which does mention Arthur in its description.
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