Plover: Portage County's First Seat of Government

Plover, Wisconsin has had a complicated relationship with official status. The area was first designated in an eighteen twenty-five treaty as a boundary point between the Chippewa and Ho-Chunk peoples, marking the Plover Portage of the Wisconsin River. European American settlers platted a village in eighteen forty-five, and in eighteen forty-four the community became the first county seat of Portage County.

It was also the first incorporated municipality in the county when it formally organized in eighteen fifty-seven. But it did not hold those distinctions for long. Stevens Point lobbied successfully for the county seat, which moved there in eighteen sixty-eight.

After losing that status, Plover dissolved its village government, then reincorporated in nineteen twelve, dissolved again in nineteen thirty-one, and finally reincorporated for good in nineteen seventy-one. Today Plover is a busy commercial village just south of Stevens Point along Interstate Thirty-Nine, home to big-box retail and one of the fastest-growing communities in central Wisconsin.