Wisconsin's Northwoods

The "Northwoods" moniker gets bandied around quite a bit, but what does it actually mean?  Just what, and where, is the "Northwoods"?

New England, and especially Maine, have claims to the label, as do Michigan and Minnesota. They all have their own "Northwoods" or "North Woods" and, in fact, they're all actually pieces of a single continuous forest. Those states, along with Wisconsin, Ontario, and Quebec share portions of a vast forest that stretches from the Upper Midwest to the Eastern seaboard. Its western half is known as the Laurentian forest and its eastern half has several different names; the Eastern forest–boreal transition, the "Great North Woods", or simply the "Northwoods". The names of that forest and its subdivisions belong in the arena of geographers and ecologists. As a Wisconsinite I'll always think of northern Wisconsin when I hear the term.

 
For my purposes, I consider Wisconsin's Northwoods to be a geographic, cultural, economic, and political region. As I see it, it encompasses an area running north from the southern boundary of Marathon county to Lake Superior and east from the western edge of Bayfield county to Lake Michigan and the border with the Upper Peninsula. I exclude Eau Claire and the westernmost counties as metropolitan Minnesota (Duluth or MSP). The counties I include are;  Ashland, Barron, Bayfield, Chippewa, Clark, Florence, Forest, Iron, Langlade, Lincoln, Marathon, Marinette, Menominee, Oconto, Oneida, Price, Rusk, Sawyer, Shawano, Taylor, Vilas, and Washburn. 

The Northwoods, as I've defined it, is distinct from the rest of Wisconsin in many subtle, but important, ways. 

• History: Europeans settled the Northwoods well after large scale settlements were already established and thriving in the southern part of the state. The Civil War serves as a good dividing line as many of the communities in the South were founded before the War (1820s-40s), while most Northwoods towns and villages were established afterward (1870s & 80s). 
• Ancestry: Wisconsin, as a whole, is generously spattered with the descendants of emigrants from the German Confederation, which later became the German or Prussian Empire, and the Austrian or Habsburg Empire; Germans, Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, etc. Were the two regions differ, is that the South had a strong injection of Yankee New Englanders early in its history, while the Northwoods attracted far more Scandinavians with many settlers coming from the great Swedish and Norwegian exoduses of the late 19th century. That is not to say that you won't find Scandinavians in the South, or English-Americans in the Northwoods, you of course will, but it's an accurate picture, generally speaking.
• Land Utilization: The countryside of the South is dominated by large scale agriculture whereas the Northwoods is, quite obviously, covered in forest. There are reasons for this involving soil composition and climate but I'll leave the explanations to agronomists. 
• Geography: The Northwoods is, in terms of altitude, higher than much of the rest of Wisconsin, though not to a great degree. It also lacks the sandstone formations found in the rest of the State.
• Economy: The eastern and south eastern portions of Wisconsin experienced heavy industrialization, and urbanization, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. As I've already mentioned, much of Wisconsin is given over to agriculture, and mining once played a prominent role in the State's economy, a miner even made it on the State's seal.  These three elements are largely absent from the Northwoods where the economy was geared toward the lumber industry, which has been in a state of steady decline since the 1930's. There are of course exceptions, many Northwoods cities and villages have a small factory of some kind, but the point stands. The collapse of the timber industry has been catastrophic for the Northwoods and 15 of the 22 counties I include in the region are, according to the Wisconsin Office of Rural Prosperity, in a state of economic distress.  Tourism and recreation now make up much of the Northwoods' economy but those industries have proven to be inadequate substitutes for logging. 
• Demographics: The Northwoods is much less densely populated than the rest of the State. According to the most recent census figures, the average age of Northwoods residents is roughly ten years older than the rest of Wisconsin. It is also more racially homogeneous, with a smaller proportion of Asian, Hispanic, and African Americans compared to Europeans than is found in the rest of the State. That is not to say that the area is racially monolithic as there are sizeable populations of Native Americans in the Northwoods particularly in Menominee, Vilas, and Sawyer counties.
• Politics: The Northwoods, with the exception of Ashland, Bayfield, and Menominee counties, has served as a Republican bastion in the State for decades.  Whether that's due to the demographic, economic, or cultural factors, or all three, is a question for political scientists but for whatever reasons, the Northwoods tends to vote far more conservatively than the rest of Wisconsin.

I believe that these unique qualities of the Northwoods make it worthy of consideration as a distinct region and, consequently, worth study and discussion.