Price County was created by the Wisconsin state legislature in 1879 from portions of Chippewa and Lincoln counties. The new county was attached to Taylor County until 1882 when it was formally organized. Price County is named after William T. Price who was serving in the Wisconsin State Senate at the time the county was formed. Price was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1882 for Wisconsin’s 8th congressional district and he served in Congress until his death in 1886. This is another case of a Wisconsin county that was named for a person who was still alive.
The first settler of European descent in what is now Price county was Major Isaac Stone who began lumbering on the Spirit River in 1860. Price County is home to Wisconsin’s highest natural point: Timms Hill, which has an elevation of 1,951 feet.
Price County has two incorporated cities, Park Falls and the county seat of Phillips. The town of Phillips was first platted in 1876 and was named for Elijah Phillips who was the general manager of the Wisconsin Central Railway. Phillips began as a logging town, so having a connection with the railway helped. In 1894 the town was destroyed by a wildfire and 13 people were killed. The town was rebuilt and a memorial to the 1894 fire stands on the shore of Lake Duroy.
Phillips has a memorial to Lidice, constructed in 1944. The village of Lidice in Czechoslovakia was destroyed and its residents killed or sent to prison camps by the Nazi occupying forces. The action was taken as a reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The memorial was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
The Price County courthouse is located at 126 Cherry Street in Phillips.