Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Mellen, WI

Mellen is a small city in Ashland County in far northern Wisconsin, settled in 1886 and incorporated on March 22, 1907.

The community was first named Iron City by its first resident, Samuel O. Bennett, after the Gogebic iron range, and was officially renamed Mellen in 1888 — most likely for William Solon Mellen, general manager of the Wisconsin Central Railroad.

Mellen's post office opened in 1887, a year after settlers arrived with the railroad.

The 2020 census counted 698 people in Mellen; in 2010 the city had 731 residents living in 337 households.

Mellen boomed with the Northwoods timber industry — the Foster-Latimer Lumber Company alone employed 485 men in 1898 — and the city's population peaked at 1,981 in 1920.

Mellen was a classic 'cutover' town: between 1886 and 1920, essentially all of Ashland County's pine and hardwood timber was clear-cut during the logging boom.

Copper Falls State Park lies just north of Mellen, where the Bad River and Tyler Forks River plunge over waterfalls through rocky gorges; the state began acquiring the park land in 1929 and Civilian Conservation Corps crews built its rustic trails and buildings in the 1930s.

In 2013, Mellen was named Wisconsin's first Trail Town by the North Country Trail Association, linking Copper Falls State Park with the North Country National Scenic Trail through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

Mellen's historic City Hall, built in 1892, stands along the trail route through town and houses a museum on its upper floor.

Mellen is the second-oldest city in Ashland County and sits along the Bad River about 25 miles south of Lake Superior and the city of Ashland.