Brantwood is an
unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
in southern
Price County,
Wisconsin
Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...
, United States located within the town of
Knox.
It lies along
United States Highway 8 and on the
Wisconsin Central Railroad, between
Prentice on the west and
Tomahawk
A tomahawk is a type of single-handed axe used by the many Native Americans in the United States, Indian peoples and nations of North America, traditionally resembles a hatchet with a straight shaft.
Etymology
The name comes from Powhatan langu ...
on the east. The rural community was settled in the late 1890s as a logging community.
History
Francis Palms was the first to purchase acreage in the area, and later sold the land to William and Samuel Knox. The Knox brothers were loggers from the
Stevens Point, Wisconsin
Stevens Point is a city in Portage County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. Its population was 25,666 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It forms the core of the Stevens Point micropolitan statistical area, which had a p ...
area. They established the small community of
Knox Mills a few miles south of Brantwood when they built a mill. The need to transport timber and products resulted in a spur being built from Brantwood to Knox Mills.
J. B. Engstrom owned a sawmill, a
planing mill
A planing mill is a facility that takes cut and Wood drying, seasoned Wood, wooden boards from a sawmill and turns them into finished dimensional lumber. Machines used in the mill include the Thickness planer, planer and matcher, the Moulding plan ...
, and a boarding house for the mostly immigrant bachelor workers in Knox Mills. The mill prospered in the 1920s, but the Great Depression shut it down until the late 1930s. Knox Mills, having no post office or main line railroad, began to disappear. The area was absorbed into the Brantwood community and the spur line abandoned.
As the land was stripped of its timber, the Knox brothers began selling it to immigrants for farm land. The community slowly changed from a booming logging industry to a sedate farming and dairy community.
Land advertisements were targeted to Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish immigrants living in other states. K. A. Ostergen and E. H. Hobe, both agents for the railroad, assisted the railroad company and the Knox brothers in marketing the land sales.
According to the 1900 US Census, there were 411 people living in the Town of Knox, which included Brantwood and Knox Mills. By 1910, the population was 1,010; in 1920 the census counted 1,251 people in the Town of Knox.
The Finns of Brantwood established a cooperative store and cheese factory that prospered well into the 1960s. However, with no industry to entice new people to the area or keep young adults there after graduation, Brantwood slowly declined as well. In the 2000 US Census there were only 399 people living in the Town of Knox.
References
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Unincorporated communities in Price County, Wisconsin
Unincorporated communities in Wisconsin