City of Rhinelander Information

The City of Rhinelander is the county seat of Oneida County, Wisconsin, and is home to approximately 8,000 year round residents. As the county seat, and with a strong commercial and industrial base, the City is the business and service center for Oneida County and with a large retail base is the retail hub for the greater Northwoods region, drawing consumers from Northern Wisconsin all the way into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Rhinelander was originally called Pelican Rapids for the stretch of rapids just above the convergence of the Wisconsin and Pelican Rivers. Around 1870, Anderson W. Brown and Anson P. Vaughn traveled up the Wisconsin River to cruise timber. Upon arriving at the site of John Curran‘s trading post, Anderson Brown envisioned a mill town with a lumber mill powered by the waters of the Wisconsin River. After subsequent expeditions with his brother and Rhinelander’s first mayor, Webster Brown, the brothers managed to convince their family to purchase the land from the government and build a town. The city was named Rhinelander after Frederic W. Rhinelander of New York, who was president of the Milwaukee, Lake Shore & Western Road at the time. In 1882, the railroad from present-day Monico to Rhinelander was completed, jump starting the development of Rhinelander as the commercial hub of the region.