It is a principal city of the Marshfield–Wisconsin Rapids micropolitan statistical area, which includes all of Wood County and had a population of 74,207 in 2020.

[8][9] When done, the deputy surveyor filed this general description: This Township is nearly all Dry land, there being no Swamp of consequence in it.

The Township is well watered with small streams but none of them are of sufficient size for Milling purposes.

DuBay started his trading post 40 miles (64 km) east on the Wisconsin River around 1818.

[14] In 1872 the Wisconsin Central Railway was building the leg of its line from Stevens Point through the forest to what would become Colby, heading north for Lake Superior.

At the railroad's request, Louis Rivers, his wife and child, and his brother Frank came to the area and started cutting an opening in the forest.

[17] In 1878 William H. Upham, a "Yankee" migrant of English descent from Massachusetts and later governor of Wisconsin,[18] built a sawmill near the railway, with a millpond.

Other businesses started, too: an alcohol factory, hotels, saloons, stores, newspapers, blacksmith, and a milliner.

[19] By 1885 the population exceeded 2,000, ranging from the Uphams in their fine Italianate homes to laborers living in shacks along the railroad.

The fire spread, consuming the sawmill and flour mill, and headed south into homes and the business district.

Men tried to stop the inferno, even dynamiting stores to create a fire break, but the updraft lifted embers and dropped them onto more buildings.

Neighbors in Stevens Point, Spencer and Wisconsin Rapids sent trainloads of supplies.

In 1887 Upham Manufacturing started a line south from town to haul logs from Cameron and Richfield.

Roddis and then Blum Brothers made wooden cheese boxes in Marshfield.

[21] In 1907 the first cold storage plant was built in town, to store local cheese before shipping it by rail to larger markets.

In 1923 a spokesman for the Soo Line Railroad said that Marshfield shipped more dairy products than any other city in the United States.

Lumbermen could pay a flat rate, and in exchange St. Joseph's would care for them in case of injury.

[26] In one of Marshfield's old Victorian houses, a once-hidden paper-hanger's signature boasts, "...1917, when the Germans licked the World.

[28] In the summer of 1945, 243 German POWs were brought in to fill a labor shortage at the canning factory north of the current Wildwood Park.

During World War II, Roddis Lumber and Veneer, which produced plywood and other composites, was "the Allies' largest pre-fabricator of wood for Liberty ships".

The Frey brothers started building Rollohomes in 1947 and were followed by other manufacturers of mobile and modular homes.

[30] With the consolidation of dairy farms and the late-2000s recession, some of these industries have contracted, and the medical complex has expanded.

[31][32] Around 2011 three new plants opened on the east side of town to process sand for hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells.

The Vox Concert Series brings music performers from across the country to Marshfield.

[citation needed] In addition, the local UW campus hosts artists in its art gallery.

Marshfield Public Library, located downtown, offers adult and children's programs.