The City of Neillsville

The County Seat of Clark County

Birds Eye View of Neillsville.

Like a sparkling gem In a beautiful setting or like a master’s picture in a beautiful frame, the city of Neillsville, county seat of Clark County, presents a most attractive sight nestled among the green hills and in the midst of wide expanses of fertile acres, where the dark currents of Black river tossing over the rocks mingles its murmuring with that of placid O’Neill creek. On a railroad which brings three passenger trains each way each day—one each way a through train from the metropolis of one state to that of another—sod with good improved roads leading out in each direction, north, east, south and west, to stretches of as fine farms as can be found anywhere in God’s green earth, with its court house surmounted by the blindfolded holder of Justice’s scales and its other public buildings outlined against the sky or against the background of encircling hills, with its blocks of busy marts and its streets of beautiful homes, surely Neillsville can take pride in the fact that it is a truly representative American city, a Wisconsin municipality, a Clark County capital, a city which has a history of which It Is not ashamed and a prospect for future growth and development which is its pride, boast and hope.

The early history of Neillsville is so closely linked with that of Clark County that to relate it would be but to repeat much that is written in another article.  Since about the year of 1876, however, the county seat has had its own experiences aside from those of the whole county. Until the first railroad came to open easy communication with the outer world, it often occasioned surprise on the part of a traveler who arrived overland from the nearest railroad town to see a New England village here in the Northern woods. The village was laid out and platted in 1855 by James O’Neill and named after him.

New Carnegie Public Library, Neillsville, Wisconsin.