This week in Wisconsin Rapids
Nothing on Wisconsin Rapids’s calendar for the next two weeks yet.
About Wisconsin Rapids
The Menominee called this stretch of the Wisconsin River Ah-dah-wah-gam, the two-sided rapids, because a big rock split the current. In the late 1830s lumbermen built sawmills at the falls and floated rafts of pine boards down the dangerous rapids toward St. Louis, while a second town, Centralia, grew on the west bank. The two joined in 1900, and in 1920 the city renamed itself Wisconsin Rapids because its mail kept going to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Paper mills powered by the river carried the city for a century, and today families walk the decorated rooms of the old Witter house at Christmas, carve in the February snow sculpture contest, and come to the library for story times, concerts and its 248-seat theater.