Camp Douglas, Wisconsin

The village of Camp Douglas was laid out in eighteen seventy and named for a logging camp run by James Douglas, who supplied wood fuel to steam locomotives passing through Juneau County. A post office opened three years later. In eighteen eighty-eight, Adjutant General Chandler P.

Chapman, a veteran of the Iron Brigade, bought land nearby for rifle practice and offered it to the state. From eighteen eighty-nine to nineteen forty, this became the primary annual training ground for the entire Wisconsin Army National Guard. In nineteen twenty-seven the installation was renamed Camp Williams in honor of the post quartermaster.

The small village took its name from a logger; the military base it neighbors took it from a soldier.