Most of the village of Withee, most of the city of Owen, and the ghost town of Clark are located in Hixon.

The soil is mostly Colby silt loam, weathered from the drift left by a glacier so long ago[3] that erosion has mostly levelled it.

Beneath the drift, the bedrock is volcanic schists and hornblende in the north of Hixon - Mount Simon sandstone in the south.

[4] The six mile square that would become Hixon was first surveyed in the summer of 1847 by a crew working for the U.S. government.

Then in late 1853 another crew marked all the section corners in the township, walking through the woods and swamps, measuring with chain and compass.

The Timber is principally White Pine of good quality and valuable for lumber.There are Several large Swamp in the Township most of which are unfit for cultivation.

Black River Enter this Township in Section 5 and runs through it in Southerly direction until it leaves the Township in Section 32 the banks of which are generally high water from 1 to 2 feet deep and averaging about 150 links in width.

No signs of development were marked on the 6-mile square which is modern Hixon, in contrast to the area around Neillsville, which had roads reaching out from a settlement grid.

[8] The town was named for Gideon C. Hixon, a lumber executive from La Crosse.

[10] It had been built just that year by the owners of the Wisconsin Central Railroad, who were eager to connect their railroad at Abbotsford with the economic activity at Chippewa Falls, which was already connected by rail to the Twin Cities.

[12] Around 1894 John S. Owen of Eau Claire bought the timber land and two sawmills of Dudley J. Spaulding and Midland Lumber and Manufacturing Company, which had gone bankrupt.

[13] A 1906 plat map shows the new village of Owen in the southeast corner of Hixon, with the new railroad cutting across diagonally.

Of note, a large portion of the names north of Withee were Scandinavian - many members of the Danish community centered on Nazareth Lutheran.

Cheese factories were marked on the map for the first time: two on the outskirts of Withee, one between Withee and Owen, and one near Amber, the settlement near the north end of Hixon which is now called Clark on some maps.