Little Black is a town (six-mile square municipality) located in Taylor County, Wisconsin.

Other than the banks of streams and the Little Black River, the surface of the town is fairly level, laid down by some unknown glacier and eroded long before the last one which bulldozed the sharp Perkinstown terminal moraine to the north.

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

In October 1854 a different crew of surveyors marked all the section corners in the township, walking through the woods and swamps, measuring with chain and compass.

[5][6] When done, the deputy surveyor filed this general description: This Township contains some Swamps, all of which are unfit for cultivation.

[7]Around 1873 the Wisconsin Central Railroad Company built its line up through the forest on the east side of the six-mile square that would become Little Black, heading for Medford and eventually Ashland.

To finance this undertaking, the railroad was granted half the land for eighteen miles on either side of the track laid - generally the odd sections.

This mill went through a succession of owners until it was bought by Davis and Starr of Eau Claire, then burned in 1889.

Davis and Starr rebuilt it with the latest technology at the time to be one of the largest mills in the state, running night and day, employing over 200 men.

[13] A map from 1900 shows the town largely filled in by settlers, except for the southwest corner.

Settlers' homesteads lined these roads, with 40 and 80 acres the most common farm sizes.

[14][15] The 1911 plat map shows thicker settlers, filling even the last southwest corner.