Reedsburg, Wisconsin

Reedsburg is a city in Sauk County, Wisconsin, along the Baraboo River. The population was 10,014 at the 2010 census. The city is surrounded by the Town of Reedsburg. It is part of the Baraboo Micropolitan Statistical Area.

History

James W. Babb and his wife Rebecca Scarff Babb brought their family to Wisconsin from Ohio in the mid 1840s. At a place fifty-fives miles northeast of Mineral Point (the capitol of Wisconsin Territory), long identified by the Winnebago who inhabited these lands as a convenient place to cross the Baraboo River, Babb left a flat-bottomed boat to help move supplies. At "Babb's Ford," in 1847 David C. Reed built a dam and a shanty to house the workers who constructed it. In June 1848 a sawmill followed. By 1850, “Shanty Row” comprised five tamarack shanties. Reedsburg was platted in 1852, and four years later the town had grown to fifty buildings serving 27 families and 122 people. The community continued under town government until 1868, when Reedsburg was incorporated as a village; it became a city in May 1887.