Editing St. Croix County, Wisconsin (section)

==History==
[[Image:StCroixCoWI-Hist.jpg|250px|right|thumb|St. Croix County of 1840 and today]]

St. Croix County was created on August 3, 1840,<ref>Laws of the Territory of Wisconsin. Belmont and Milwaukee, 1836–1848. no. 20, sec. 1/pp. 25-6</ref> by the legislature of the [[Wisconsin Territory]]. It was named after the river on its western border.<ref>{{cite news|title=Winnebago Took Its Name from an Indian Tribe |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/915335/wisconsin_county_names/|newspaper=The Post-Crescent|date=December 28, 1963|page=14|via = [[Newspapers.com]]|access-date = August 25, 2014 }} {{Open access}}</ref> Sources vary on the name's origin. The [[St. Croix River (Wisconsin-Minnesota)|St. Croix River]] may have been named after an explorer named St. Croix who drowned at the river's mouth in the late 17th century. According to another account, [[Father Hennepin]] gave this region the French name ''St<sup>e</sup> Croix'' (Holy Cross) because of the burial markers at the river's mouth.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://hudsonwi.org/images/pdfs/History%20of%20St%20Croix%20County.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=August 19, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110726161628/http://hudsonwi.org/images/pdfs/History%20of%20St%20Croix%20County.pdf |archive-date=July 26, 2011 }} History of St. Croix County</ref>

[[La Pointe County, Wisconsin|La Pointe County]] (now extinct, see [[Bayfield County, Wisconsin|Bayfield County]]) was created from the northern portions of Wisconsin Territory's St. Croix County on February 19, 1845.<ref>Laws of the Territory of Wisconsin. Belmont and Milwaukee, 1836–1848. 1845 pp. 52-3</ref> When Wisconsin was admitted into the union as a state on May 29, 1848, the territorial St. Croix County was further divided, with the territory from the Mississippi River to the Minnesota border remaining de facto Wisconsin Territory until on March 3, 1849,<ref>Statutes at Large of the United States of America, 1789–1873. 17 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1845–1874. vol. 9, ch. 89 [1846]/pp. 56-58</ref><ref>Statutes at Large of the United States of America, 1789–1873. 17 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1845–1874. vol. 9, ch. 50 [1848]/pp. 233-235</ref><ref>Van Zandt, Franklin K. Boundaries of the United States and the Several States. Geological Survey Professional Paper 909. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1976. pp. 128-130</ref> it and unorganized federal territory north of Iowa were used in the creation of the [[Minnesota Territory]].<ref>Statutes at Large of the United States of America, 1789–1873. 17 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1845–1874.vol. 9, ch. 121 [1849]/pp. 403-9</ref> [[Itasca County, Minnesota|Itasca]], [[Washington County, Minnesota|Washington]], [[Ramsey County, Minnesota|Ramsey]] and [[Benton County, Minnesota|Benton]] Counties were created by the Minnesota Territory on October 27, 1849,<ref>Session Laws of the Territory of Minnesota. St. Paul, 1850-1857. [1849] ch. 5, secs. 2-5, 7-9, 19-20/pp. 7-9</ref> from the de facto Wisconsin Territory that had been separated from the Wisconsin Territory's La Pointe County.

The part of St. Croix County allocated to Wisconsin became the parental county to [[Pierce County, Wisconsin|Pierce]] and [[Polk County, Wisconsin|Polk]] Counties, and formed significant portions of [[Dunn County, Wisconsin|Dunn]], [[Barron County, Wisconsin|Barron]], [[Washburn County, Wisconsin|Washburn]] and [[Burnett County, Wisconsin|Burnett]] Counties.

On [[1899 New Richmond tornado|June 12, 1899]], a deadly [[Fujita scale|F5]] [[tornado]] struck [[New Richmond, Wisconsin|New Richmond]]. The tornado's damage path was {{convert|400|yd}} wide and {{convert|46|mi|km}} long. The tornado formed on the banks of the St. Croix River, south of Hudson. Moving to the northeast across St. Croix County, the tornado passed through the villages of Burkhardt and Boardman before striking New Richmond head on, leveling the entire business district and half the town's residences. The storm continued northeast, narrowly missing the town of Deer Park before crossing into Polk County, where it narrowly missed the towns of Clear Lake, Richardson, and Clayton. Once the tornado passed into Barron County, it struck the village of Arland before breaking up southwest of Barron. The tornado killed 117 people (four at Boardman, two in Polk County, and the rest at New Richmond), including at least 20 people who died from their injuries in the days after the storm. Largely thanks to state aid and donations, most of the town was rebuilt by the next winter. The tornado was the deadliest ever recorded in Wisconsin and the [[Tornado records|9th deadliest tornado]] in U.S. history.