24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Amberg, WI

Amberg is an unincorporated census-designated place in Marinette County, Wisconsin, located on U.S. Highway 141 within the town of Amberg.

Amberg had a population of 147 at the 2020 census, down from 180 at the 2010 census, when the community had 91 households.

The surrounding town of Amberg, which contains the community, had 693 residents at the 2020 census, and Amberg is part of the Marinette, Wisconsin-Michigan Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Amberg grew up around granite quarrying: the Amberg Granite Company, owned by William Amberg of Chicago, was the first quarry operator in the area, working the Argyle, Martindale, Athelstane and Aberdeen quarries.

The local stone includes a fine-grained gray granite and a coarse-grained red granite known as 'Amberg red,' quarried at the Aberdeen quarry, while the Argyle and Martindale quarries produced the gray monumental stone.

The Milwaukee & Northern railroad reached the community, then called Pike, in 1884, making it possible to ship granite paving blocks, building stone and gravestones that made Amberg a leading granite producer in the Midwest; the community of Pike became the town of Amberg in 1890, and the town's population reached 2,802 by 1905.

No active quarries remain in the Amberg area today, but the Amberg Museum complex in the town preserves the history of the quarries and the surrounding community.

Dave's Falls, a waterfall on the Pike River near Amberg, was originally known as Pem-a-wan Falls and was renamed for lumberjack Dave Frechette, a river crew boss who drowned there in 1881 while trying to free a log jam.

Marinette County, where Amberg sits in Wisconsin's northeastern Northwoods, bills itself as the Waterfall Capital of Wisconsin for its collection of falls, and its county seat is the city of Marinette.