[5] Brunet was a French-born American who served in the U.S. Army and led the building in 1836 of the first dam and sawmill in the then-wilderness at Chippewa Falls.

[6] From his log cabin he ran a trading post that initially served Indians, and later grew into a stopping place (inn) for loggers and traders heading upriver.

[7] The city was named for Ezra Cornell, one of the founders of Western Union, who owned a very large amount of timber land in the area.

Upon his death in 1874, this land became a part of the endowment for the Ivy League university that bears his name.

[8] Cornell has the U.S.'s only surviving pulpwood stacker, a huge device built next to the Chippewa River in 1911 to quickly and safely stack large quantities of pulpwood logs for storage until they could be processed in the paper mill nearby.

The northern trailhead for the Old Abe State Trail, a paved rail-trail, is located downtown.

It was used to move large quantities of pulpwood logs, making the process of stacking wood faster, safer, and easier.