Ashland

Ashland, a city and the county-seat of Ashland county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., situated about 315 m. N.W. of Milwaukee, and about 70 m. E. of Superior and Duluth, in the N. part of the state, at the head of Chequamegon Bay, an arm of Lake Superior. Pop. (1890) 9956; (1900) 13,074, of whom 4417 were foreign-born; (1910, census) 11,594. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western, the Northern Pacific, the Chicago, St Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha, and the Wisconsin Central railways, and by several steamboat lines on the Great Lakes. The city is attractively situated, has a dry, healthful climate, and is a summer resort. It has a fine Federal building, one of the best high-school buildings in Wisconsin, the Vaughn public library (1895), a Roman Catholic hospital, and the Rinehart hospital, and is the seat of the Northland College and Academy (Congregational). Ashland has an excellent harbour, has large iron-ore and coal docks, and is the principal port for the shipment of iron ore from the rich Gogebic Range, the annual ore shipment approximating 3,500,000 tons, valued at $12,000,000, and it has also an extensive export trade in lumber. Brownstone quarried in the vicinity is also an important export. The lake trade amounts to more than $35,000,000 annually. Ashland has large saw-mills, iron and steel rolling mills, foundries and machine shops, railway repair shops (of the Chicago & North-Western railway), knitting works, and manufactories of dynamite, sulphite fibre, charcoal and wood-alcohol. In 1905 its total factory product was valued at $4,210,265. Settled about 1854, Ashland was incorporated as a village in 1863 and received a city charter in 1887.