WAUSAU or WASSAU, formerly BIG BULL FALLS, a post-village, capital of Marathon co., Wisconsin, on the Wisconsin river, 175 miles N. from Madison. Large quantities of lumber are procured here annually, and sent down the river by rafts. It contains 5 stores, 4 flour mills, and 9 saw mills. It has a migratory population, estimated at from 300 to 600. (Baldwin's New and Complete Gazetteer of the United States..., 1854)
WAUSAU, P. V. & C. H., on sections 25, 35, 26 and 36, of town 29 N., of range 7 E., in Marathon county, at Big Bull Fails, on the Wisconsin. It is 150 miles north from Madison. Its location is good for manufacturing and agricultural interests— combining fertility of soil, unsurpassed in the north—water power sufficient to supply the State, if properly distributed— and large quantities of pine for future use. The place is new, having had a P. O. but two years. The interest lumbering chiefly; but recently attention has been paid to the cultivation of some of the maple ridges, which are very numerous, and found to repay the laborer largely. It has a migratory population of about 300; with 5 stores, 4 hotels, 4 mills with 12 run of stones, and 9 saw mills. (John Warren Hunt, Wisconsin Gazetteer..., Madison, 1853)