Spring Creek

Lodi owes its genesis and growth to Spring Creek. In the 1800s when settlers from Europe and the eastern states moved west, they used rivers to power machinery that ground grain into flour and sawed logs into lumber. One of these settlers, Isaac Palmer, bought 40 acres of land after going on a hunting trip in 1845 to the headwaters of Spring Creek. Within a year, Palmer had built a sawmill along the creek. On June 25, 1848, only a month after Wisconsin became a state, Palmer recorded the first plat of the town which he called Lodi. The same year, Samuel Ring built the area’s first grist mill beside Spring Creek, enabling local farmers to have their grain ground into flour locally. Palmer would build a grist mill of his own in 1850. By 1852, a small town had built up around these enterprises, including dozens of houses, several different stores, three churches, and a school.