The Langlade County courthouse on September 10, 2018
Langlade County was created by the state legislature in 1879 from land which had been part of Oconto County. The new county was originally named “New County” but in 1880 it was named after Charles de Langlade (born in 1729, died in 1801), who is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Wisconsin”. He was a Great Lakes fur trader and also a Native American war chief who resided in what is now Northeastern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
So Langlade County is one of the Wisconsin counties that has been renamed. The county was organized in 1881 and underwent several boundary changes before it assumed its current boundaries in 1885. Antigo is the county seat; it is the only incorporated city in the county.
Antigo was founded in 1876 by Francis Deleglise and George Eckart. The lumber industry was the principal driving force behind the development of the city. Today the economy of Antigo and Langlade County is much more balanced between industry, agriculture and tourism.
The Langlade County courthouse is located at 800 Clermont Street in Antigo. The courthouse was built in 1905 and was designed by the same architects who designed the Lafayette County courthouse in Darlington. I visited on Monday September 10, 2018. It was the day after the Door County Century bike ride and I was taking the long way home. The courthouse is located just a few blocks from the main business district so it’s in a quiet neighborhood. It’s a very striking building, with the sheriff’s offices in a more recent addition. There is an odd metal and glass addition that has been tacked on to the rear of the old building; it looks a little odd to say the least.
The big excitement during my visit was when my camera failed. Apparently the sensor suffered a major failure and every photo after the failure looks very over-exposed. Thankfully my phone has a good camera in it!
I have a lot of memories of Langlade County. When my family would go to visit my grandparents in Upper Michigan we would often take a route that passed through Antigo. I remember occasionally stopping in Antigo for lunch on our way home from “up North.”
But I think I spent the most amount of time in Langlade County during the years that I went to Boy Scout camp at Gardner Dam. This is located on the Wolf River in the southeastern part of Langlade County; it’s very close to Oconto County. In fact Boulder Lake (which is close enough to the camp that we sometimes went there to swim) is partly in Oconto County. I went to camp there four years, beginning in 1969. My first day of camp was July 20, 1969 which I remember because of the first landing on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts. Camp was typically a lot of fun. I especially remember rafting on the Wolf River. I also remember that my Boy Scout troop actually went there for a weekend in the winter one year; of course we stayed in cabins instead of tents!