Shanagolden (community), Wisconsin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Shanagolden, Wisconsin
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 Shanagolden (community), Wisconsin
Location in Wisconsin
Shanagolden (community), Wisconsin
Location in the United States
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| Country |  United States |
| State |  Wisconsin |
| County | Ashland |
| Town | Shanagolden |
| Elevation | 459 m (1,506 ft) |
| Time zone | UTC-6 (Central (CST)) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-5 (CDT) |
| Area code(s) | 715 & 534 |
| GNIS feature ID | 1580389 |
Shanagolden is a small, quiet place in Wisconsin, United States. It's known as an "unincorporated community," which means it's a group of homes and buildings that isn't officially a town or city with its own local government. Shanagolden is found in Ashland County, Wisconsin, near the East Fork Chippewa River. It's about 10 miles (16 km) northwest of a place called Butternut.
Contents
The Story of Shanagolden
How Shanagolden Started
In 1901, a company called Nash Lumber Company bought a huge area of forest, about 40,000 acres, in Wisconsin. Between 1902 and 1903, they chose a spot along the Chippewa River to build a new community. They built a sawmill to cut wood, a boarding house for workers, and a store that later became the post office. They also built homes for their employees and a schoolhouse for children. To help move the wood, they built a four-mile railroad track that connected to a bigger railway line at Glidden. The main factory had a sawmill, a planing mill (which smoothed wood), and a shingle mill (which made roof tiles).
Naming the Community
The Nash family named this new mill town "Shanagolden." They chose this name because their ancestors came from a fishing village in County Limerick, Ireland, also called Shanagolden. The Nashes did something special for their time: they kept some of the original forest around the town to make it look nice. They also let workers buy land and build their own homes, so the streets didn't all look the same. The Nash family even hired a famous architect to design one of their homes and a special meeting place for the Shanagolden Improvement Club, which was a women's group. People in the town enjoyed picnics, fairs, parties, fishing, hunting, baseball, and card games.
Challenges and Changes
In the winter of 1905-1906, the Nash company had many logging camps with about 600 men working in the forests nearby. The mill itself employed 250 men, and about 300 to 350 people lived in Shanagolden. Even though newspapers wrote good things about the company, it was actually losing money.
In June 1907, the sawmill caught fire and burned down. People managed to save the planing mill and the piles of wood. There was talk of rebuilding, but the sawmill was never rebuilt. Most of the workers lost their jobs in November of that year.
A few years later, the Mellen Lumber Company bought the mill at Shanagolden and a lot of the surrounding forest. They built a new shingle mill and started working again, but on a smaller scale. Then, in 1912, the Mellen Company decided to move all their operations to Glidden. Many workers moved too, and some of the homes were even moved to Glidden on train cars and on sleighs during winter.
The End of an Era
In 1916, the Ashland Farm Land Company bought the old Nash buildings and 40,000 acres of land where trees had been cut down. They planned to sell this land to farmers from other states. They sold some farms, but the land was very hard to grow crops on. Major logging in the area stopped by 1919. The railroad line to Glidden was no longer used after 1925, and the community of Shanagolden slowly became smaller and quieter over time.
