I may have an opportunity to re-locate there.  I'm currently around the Dells/Baraboo area.  I haven't spent much time in Wausau other than driving through.  I'm used to smaller towns, and would be looking for a place about 10-20 min outside the city areas.  

Mainly wondering what the people/area are like, or any reasons to avoid it.  Seems like a fairly conservative county based on past voting.

From Marshfield but lived and worked in Wausau many years.
Haven't been back for a while.
Gateway to the northwoods
Big city amenities and some of their problems as well...
Had a nice range near Rib Mountain (or whatever they call it these days)
Pretty liberal town...police chief deputies mayor march in their little BLM parade
I'd live south if I were going back or out in the country a ways out...
Lots of nice wooded area lots of recreational areas lakes,rivers,streams nearby.
People are good folks for the most part.

"Gateway to the Northwoods" is accurate. Wausau has a Menards, Home Depot, and the "Man's Mall" (Fleet Farm), that is all you need to know.

Going north out of Wausau, you start to climb in elevation. And you'll keep climbing. Take a look at Rib Mountain as you drive by on I-39/US 51. Elevation of the nearby city of Wausau is 1,207' above sea level. Rib Mountain stands at 1,942' above sea level. Where I live, east of Eagle River near the confluence of Vilas/Oneida/Forest Counties, the average elevation is at or above 1,700'.... or 500' above the city of Wausau and points southward. Local people who were born & raised around here call anyone from any place south of Wausau a "flatlander".

Northern Highland American Legion Forest....too bad the FIBs are coming like locusts...lucky Mpls didn't burn or we'd get invaded from across the Mississippi too...

Sam's Club too...Gander Mountain it was run by an old friend from Green Bay years ago...probably not much to write home about...but there are a couple of gun stores around...

If I do move back up nort' again probably be to Eagle River area or Florence County

FIBS have been coming up north for about a century. Hell man, I used to be one of them myself, from 1955-1991. I spent the 1st 5 years of my life in central WI, and the last 30 years in up-nort' WI. I'm now 70, and the 35 in-between years, I was technically a FIB... but I've always been a "cheesehead" at heart. Lived half my life below that state line, the other half above it. Most of it WAY above it.

Up north natives have a saying... "you know how you can tell the Milwaukee people from the Chicago people? The color of their license plates, and whether they're Packers or Bears fans. Other than that, they're all the same big-city flatlanders."

Hells bells you're the last guy I'd call a FIB bro...far from it.

FIBs have been coming up north since before Capone and Dillinger

When I say FIB I'm talking attitude & lifestyle...

My grandpa had a couple of lake cottages in the area bought his first back in the late 30's...
I moved from Point to Tomahawk back in the late 70s when I started working at Lincoln Hills
There were lots of Chicago people up there back then all summer long...sure loved Labor Day before everyone
stayed through the winter though..
You could have a whole lake to yourself back then which was nice.

Well technically....

When I fill out a 4473, I list place of birth as Chicago. Because even though we didn't live there, I was born in a hospital there, and that's what's on my birth certificate. My grandma's brother, my mom's uncle, was a doctor. He was a resident at a hospital down there, on the south side. Doctor's fee for child birth, in those days before health insurance to cover it, was a "freebie" for my mom...  but only if my mom went down there to give birth, and he did the honors of my first ass kicking.  



I hear that. I never did 'fit in' down there, I was too much of a redneck from farm country. My high school friends in the 60s mostly wore leather jackets, I wore flannels and denim jackets. Or old school WWII camo. In the 70s they "got hip" and started wearing tie-dye and bell bottoms, listening to "Psychedellic" shit. I still wore flannels, denim jackets, "Cat" ball cap, and cowboy boots... and l was into Waylon & Willie. Weekends in the fall, I was off hunting with my dad and gramps, while they were just "hanging out" and partying late at night while I was sleeping early because I was up 2 hours before sun-up. I was called "shit-kicker" a lot. I spent a lot of time in summers, as a kid, in Juneau County with grandparents & family there, and hated it when I had to go back home when school started.

I had family move up to Mercer in the early 70s. They owned a lodge on Turtle Flambeau. That's how I wound up in Eagle River. I was looking to move to Mercer area also, but the best business opportunity for me was here in Vilas/Oneida/Forest, back in 1991. Everyone has to pay the bills and have food for the family, and this is where the money was. So I "settled" for this area.

LOL... speaking of food... my kids were sick of eating Illinois pheasants by then anyway, and liked the grouse much better. I had 3 English Setters when I moved here. As they died off over the years, I replaced them with Choc Labs. Started shifting my focus from upland birds to waterfowling. And the kids loved the venison too. Since 1964, I  missed a single WI gun deer season, in 1969.



My parents had one over near Ladysmith. My dad built all the cottages at 2 resorts in the 1950s, one over there and the other up near Hayward. We didn't own them, just helped to build them for friends and family. I remember being a "helper" when I was about 7 or 8. Mainly doing clean up, holding ladders, holding boards for cutting, being the "go-fer", etc. By age 13, I was doing roof shingling. Remained a roofer until age 36. I hated that job, but loved the money it paid, and I was good at it. I was precise and I was fast. That paid top dollar. And I always had a great tan. Now I've got the basal cell carcinoma that comes with that great tan.

Thanks for the responses.  Not surprised to hear Wausau itself is a bit liberal, but was hoping it wasn't too bad.  

It looks to be a lot more forested than where I'm at now, which would be kind of nice.  I'm originally a Yooper, so I'm used to having a lot of trees around me.

there is the 9mile forest area near town of Rib Mountain.

I like the area around Deerfield north east of town.

Wausau puts you in an area with the most amenities...like a good base camp to push north and north east out of the city
into a more wooded area...The UP it is not but it ain't too bad...for a city.

I'd just not wanna live in the city proper anymore...back in the 70s it was nice,clean and safe...you could leave your doors unlocked and you car parked on the street on Christmas Eve full of presents and not get robbed (generally speaking)...

But then again pretty much all of America went bad in those ways.

I'd live in Weston if I had to live in town again or north,north east of town along one of the spring fed creeks...I like the Plover River headwaters especially

I'm down in Marshfield, it's a bit lib too. Wausau is OK, I'm not there enough to know the immediate area.  Rib Mtn area looks like it's being built up fast, new housing developments in the immediate area.  There's a nice airport just down the road, though, if that matters.

Only positive thing I have to add to this thread, at least I'm not a FIB.

Yeah grew up there the Clinic turned Marshfield into Karentown

While I agree, the Fleet Farm had more people unmasked than masked.  That was mildly reassuring.

Well there ya go...FF probably not the Karen's first place to shop...

It was my favorite though back in the day...

ahh the stories I could tell...back in high school when I worked at the country club...

Back in the day when I worked for Marshberg, my buddy and I would head to the CC after midnight shift and take advantage of the early-bird special.  Nothing like a rooster tail behind your ball on the green.  Seems that they always somehow had a large number of ding dongs on the council however.  And yeah, what the Clinic wanted, the Clinic got.

Started my career in Wausau and absolutely love that area.  Big city amenities and a short drive to the north woods.  It was too tough forging out an engineering career there however and I was forced to move south.  Been in Madison for 16 years now and I have the attitude of making bank while I’m here and as soon as my nest egg is fat enough, cash out and move back north.  

Every time I’m in town I still have to drive past my old house for novelty purposes.  

My current neighbor’s grandson is a news anchor on Channel 7.  Is interesting visiting with him on his take on Wausau as he’s originally from Minneapolis.  His take is very conservative, but the town is too small for him...wants to get in a bigger market.  I have another neighbor down here that just moved out of Wausau because she felt the area was too conservative and wanted to live in a more liberal area.

I'm going to head up there in the next week or so and just explore around a bit.  Not going to be fun finding a house with how fast everything seems to be moving, if I do make the move.

There's a Texas Roadhouse

You’d have a good brewery in town if you moved...Bull Falls makes some good stuff (and the taproom is pretty nice too).

Not from Wausau, but Red Eye was really good when we were there a few years ago.