Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Park Falls, WI

Park Falls is a city in Price County in north-central Wisconsin, surrounded largely by the Chequamegon National Forest.

The city is divided by the North Fork of the Flambeau River, a popular destination for fishing, canoeing and whitewater rafting.

Park Falls began in the late 19th century as a small river village called Muskellunge Falls, where the first homesteads were built in 1876.

The settlement was renamed Park Falls because the tall pines around the falls gave the spot the look of a park.

Lumberman Henry Sherry built a band-saw mill at the falls in 1885, and the first post office opened in his company store in 1889.

Pulp manufacturing began at Park Falls in 1890, and Sherry's pulp mill expanded into the Flambeau Paper Company, which produced its first paper in the late 1890s.

Park Falls was incorporated as a village in 1901, when it had about 750 people, and became a city in 1912 with roughly 2,000 residents.

At the height of its industrial success, Park Falls' population swelled to more than 4,000 residents.

The Flambeau River Papers mill, once the area's largest employer, closed in early 2006 after more than a century of paper making, but a buyer reopened it that same August.

Park Falls is also home to St. Croix Rod, a fishing rod manufacturer, and a factory for Weather Shield, a window manufacturer.