Hudson, Wisconsin
Near Stillwater, Wisconsin
Hudson has worn three names. In the summer of eighteen forty, a French-Indian fur trader named Pete Bouchea and a French-Canadian named Louis Massey paddled their canoes into the mouth of the Willow River here, becoming the first Euro-American settlers in what is now St. Croix County.
The settlement was called Willow River, then Buena Vista. In eighteen fifty-two, A. D.
Gray, the town's first mayor, settled on Hudson because the bluffs along the St. Croix reminded him so strongly of the Hudson River in New York. Lumber drove early growth, and the railroad's arrival in eighteen seventy-one completed the town's transformation from river post to regional center.
