It originally covered the western half of Wisconsin's present area.

In 1836, it was transferred to the newly formed Wisconsin Territory as Michigan prepared for statehood and has gradually been subdivided into its present area.

[4] The county's highest point is near St. James Church in Rising Sun.

33.6% were of German, 16.0% Norwegian, 11.4% Irish, 7.2% Czech, 7.2% English and 6.4% United States or American ancestry.

Prairie du Chien Municipal Airport (KPDC) serves Crawford County and the surrounding communities.

The county leaned Republican for many years, until 1988 when Michael Dukakis won it by a margin of 5.3 percentage points.

In 2016, Donald Trump won Crawford County by 5.4 percentage points.

Trump would win it again in 2020 by a larger margin of 7.8 percentage points, marking the first time the county voted for a Republican back to back election cycles since 1984 when Ronald Reagan carried Crawford County.

Trump won Crawford County for a third time in 2024, once again increasing his margin of victory, this time to 13.8 percentage points, the best Republican performance in the county since the 1972 landslide reelection of Richard Nixon.