Cassville. Between 1816 and 1820 a man named Shaw stopped here while on a trip down the Mississippi River. In 1824 Thomas Hymer found a deserted cabin here. The settlement began in 1827 and was named in honor of Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan Territory, which included the present state of Wisconsin.
Castle Rock. The township was originally called Blue River. The name was changed to Castle Rock after a peculiarly shaped rock nearby.
Centerville. Located directly on the line between Iowa and Grant Counties.
Charlotte. The origin of the name is uncertain, but the first child born to European settlers in Wisconsin, at Fort Crawford, was named Charlotte Wisconsin Clark by parents, who were traveling to Fort Snelling, Minnesota.
Clifton. Bosman Clifton, a pioneer settler, owned land in an area known as Martinsville. When his daughter died at the age of seven, Clifton offered to donate one and a half acres for a church, and a town grew up around it with his name.
Crab Tree Corners. An abundance of crabapple trees grows in the vicinity.
Cuba City. In 1848 this territory belonged to Mr. Nicholas, and at his death it was divided among his children. The small settlement, called Western, became the stopping place for teamsters driving from the mines of Mineral Point to Galena. There was a hotel with a root house and pasture for the horses that were exchanged here for fresh ones. Mr. Craiglaw built the first house, and the name of the settlement became Craiglaw for a time.
The Wisconsin State Journal of October 27, 1941, has this account of how the name was changed to Cuba City:
‘Legend has it that when William Stephens, Madison Y. Johnson, and Solomon Craiglaw platted the village some seventy years ago, there was some disagreement among the partners as to what the name of the fledgling should be. At a meeting of the three one day, Johnson asked if the others had thought of a name. Stephens answered, ‘We’ll call it Stephensville.’
At this, Craiglaw shouted, ‘You be damned. We won’t.’
Stephens, evidently not lacking a sense of humor, then said quickly, ‘That’s it, we’ll call it Yuba.’
And that was the name for a short time until it was discovered that there was another Yuba in the state. Then the initial Y was changed to C, and the village was Cuba. There are old plat books with a printed C pasted over the Y.
The post office was officially Cuba, Wisconsin, until the 1920s. Then, during Assemblyman W. H. Goldthorpe’s term as postmaster, he asked the Post Office Department to change the name to Cuba City, citing as his chief reason for the request that there were no less than five Cubas in the United States, which caused much confusion in handling the mail. He also pointed out that the railroad express office had always been Cuba City. Why that was, no one seems to know. As a result of Goldthorpe’s petition, the post office department changed the name to Cuba City, Wisconsin.”