[5] According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 2.34 square miles (6.06 km2), all of it land.

It built a section house where the line crossed the river and named the stop for Sally Gilman, the wife of the president of the Northwestern Lumber Company.

The SM&P ran generally north through town, passing just east of the current school.

Around 1905, the Wisconsin Central Railway built its line northwest through town, heading from Owen to Ladysmith and eventually Superior.

In 1907 Roy Heagle and others started a stave and heading mill called Gilman Manufacturing Company on the south side of town near the river.

During World War I the mill ran around the clock making barrels for ammunition.

[10] During the same period, the village of Polley had grown two miles to the south, also on the SM&P line.

It had a school, a hotel-saloon, a general store, a forty-man sawmill, a barber, a cheese factory, a millinery shop, and a newspaper.

[10] But the SM&P shut down in the 1930s and Polley declined until today only a bar and some homes and farms remain, while Gilman survives.

In the 1950s a central high school was started at Gilman for all of western Taylor County.

Today Gilman is smaller than it once was, but it has a hardware store, a few cafes, a bank, and other services.

Major employers in town are the school, the nursing home, and Gilman Cheese.