24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Odanah, WI

Odanah is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in the Town of Sanborn, Ashland County, Wisconsin, on U.S. Highway 2 about 5 miles east of the city of Ashland.

Odanah is the administrative and cultural center — the tribal headquarters — of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized Ojibwe tribe.

Its name is the Ojibwe word for "village" or "town"; Presbyterian missionary Leonard Wheeler established a mission and homestead here and gave the settlement the name Odanah.

Working at his Odanah homestead over nearly two decades, Leonard Wheeler perfected the Eclipse windmill, which — after he patented the design in 1866 — became one of the most successful windpump designs in American history.

The community grew near the junction of the Bad and White rivers, close to the wild rice beds at the mouth of the Bad River that had long made the site an Ojibwe settlement known as Kietiganing.

The Bad River Reservation surrounding Odanah was set aside for the tribe by the Treaty of La Pointe, signed on September 30, 1854, and the reservation counted 1,545 residents at the 2020 census.

In the late 19th century, the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration ran St. Mary's School, an Indian boarding school, in Odanah.

The Census Bureau counts Odanah itself as a small CDP — 47 residents in 2020 — while most of the community's population lives in the adjoining New Odanah CDP, which counted 466 people in 2020.

In local usage, New Odanah is simply part of Odanah, and Odanah is the only name shown for the community on Wisconsin state and county highway maps.

Much of the Bad River Reservation around Odanah is undeveloped forest and wetland, habitat that supports the wild rice beds still central to Ojibwe culture.