Taylor County was created in 1875 by the Wisconsin state legislature from parts of Chippewa, Clark, Lincoln and Marathon counties. The boundaries of Taylor County are the same today as they were in 1875, which is somewhat unusual for counties in the northern and western part of the state. There is some question about who the new county was named for; to me the most plausible story is that Taylor County was named for William Taylor, who was governor of Wisconsin at the time the new county was created. In any case, Taylor County was not named for Zachary Taylor, so it is not one of Wisconsin’s presidential counties.
Supposedly the earliest recorded event in the history of what is now Taylor County occurred in 1661. A French Jesuit priest, Father Menard, disappeared while on an expedition to aid Native Americans from the Huron tribe who were in the area and starving. The European settlement of the area began in 1847 when a team of surveyors entered the area. They were followed by loggers and then the Wisconsin Central Railroad. The first known settler in the area was A. E. Harder who established his residence in the area of what is now Medford in 1872. As the lumber industry began to dwindle, the cleared land began to be used for agriculture.
The City of Medford is the seat of Taylor County. The 1875 Act creating the new county specified Medford (then a village) as the county seat. Medford was incorporated as a city in 1889.
The Taylor County courthouse is located at 224 South Second Street in Medford. The courthouse was built in 1914 to replace the original courthouse which was constructed in 1876. The current courthouse was designed by Baldwin Mehner, who also designed the Calumet County courthouse. The building is a three story Neoclassical building with a metal-clad dome. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.