It is also the home of the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company, the Heyde Center for the Arts, a showcase venue for artists and performers; Irvine Park, and the annual Northern Wisconsin State Fair.

For thousands of years the Chippewa River was a water highway through a wilderness of forests and swamps, travelled by Ojibwe people, Lakota and others.

Pierre LeSueur "discovered" the Chippewa Spring in 1700 when this area was part of New France.

As agreed at the 1825 treaty of Prairie du Chien, Warren was to act as a sub-agent for the U.S. government to the Chippewas.

Intertwined with that, Warren's farm served as a trading post for the American Fur Company.

When the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters opened this part of northern Wisconsin to logging, Jean Brunett led a team up the Chippewa River to build a sawmill at the Falls.

A school, a post office, a mercantile store, the first churches, and the first newspaper had all opened by 1857.

In the 1870s boardwalks were added along Bridge Street, gas streetlights were installed, and a telephone line was run up from Eau Claire.

In 1870, the West Wisconsin Railway had built a line from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Milwaukee, running ten miles to the south through Eau Claire.

In 1880, the CF&W was joined by the Wisconsin and Minnesota Railway pushing its way west from Abbotsford.

The sawmill at Chippewa Falls was run by the Chippewa Lumber and Boom Company, and the company's logging crews cut trees on their lands upstream in winter and drove logs down to the sawmill at the Falls each spring.

The company employed 400 people and the mill at Chippewa was said to be "the largest sawmill under one roof in the world.

By 1902 it had become clear that the pineries were not as inexhaustible as many had thought, and a group of business leaders began to promote more diverse industries.

The original McDonell High School building, constructed at a prominent location above downtown Chippewa Falls, is listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places.

After the high school was relocated to a new building in a more suburban location, this structure was vacant for several years.

It was taken over by the Chippewa Valley Cultural Association and converted into the Heyde Center for the Arts in 2000.