Wausau, WI news and local guide

In 1840 George Stevens, namesake of nearby Stevens Point, began cutting the pine forests and built a sawmill, and other mills soon followed along the Wisconsin River. Walter McIndoe arrived by 1846 and helped establish Marathon County in 1850, and by 1852 Wausau was a town. German immigrants arrived after the revolutions of 1848; August Kickbusch brought back 702 people from Germany. Wausau became a village in 1861 and received a city charter in 1872, with Kickbusch as first mayor, and the railroad arrived in 1874. By 1906 the pine was gone. Employers Insurance of Wausau led the city's turn to new industries in the early 20th century, and the Grand Theater was built in 1927. After the fall of Saigon, Hmong refugees who had fought alongside the CIA in Laos began settling in Wausau at the end of the 1970s, helped by Catholic and Lutheran churches, and became the city's largest ethnic minority. The Wausau Center mall opened in 1983. Sources Wikipedia: Wausau, Wisconsin