The Hamburg post office opened in 1879, the earliest record of the town by name. Two smaller post offices, Barney (1894) and La Follette (1907), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
2020 census: 827147 years
Founding year: the first Hamburg post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).
What stands out about Hamburg’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited on each place’s page.
The story so far
Hamburg, in brief
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Hamburg yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Hamburg is a town in Marathon County, Wisconsin, United States. It is part of the Wausau, Wisconsin Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2020 census, the town had a population of 827. The unincorporated community of Little Chicago is located within the town.
Its first post office opened in 1879. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population fell from 918 to 827 (-10%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
From the old history books
What they wrote about Hamburg in 1913
Passages that mention Hamburg, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Marathon County, Wisconsin1913 · page 557Read the page →
Read the text
The town of Hamburg was set off from the town of Berlin February 10, 1876, to consist of township 30, ranges 3, 4 and 5. The first chairman and member of the county board was Carl Kleinschmidt. Hamburg was settled simultaneously with Berlin and Maine, but the settlers remained few and their number grew slowly. They were all Gennan emigrants for a good many years, coming from Pomerania, in Gennany, the same province from where nearly the whole German emigrants hailed.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
History of Marathon County, Wisconsin1913 · page 542Read the page →
Read the text
of side line to their regular lumbering employment, and who made not much progress as farmers. But the men that went into the town of Berlin — and that includes those w-ho settled in the town of Maine and a few in the town of Hamburg — came for the sole purpose of farming, intending to live by farming and make a living for themselves and their families, and grow up with the country. They all had families when they came, and few if any that ever settled in the present town of Berlin ever emigrated therefrom.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Hamburg, 1879 to 1986
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From the National Register of Historic Places (2), U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
