Prentice is a village in Price County, Wisconsin, United States, near where Highway 13 crosses the Jump River.

The area that would become Prentice was big woods until 1873, when the Wisconsin Central Railroad built its rail line up through the forest, heading from Stevens Point for Ashland.

[6] In 1881 Alexander Prentice and George Greenman came north from Portage, scouting for a good place to build a lumber mill.

They found plenty of timber around Malden station, and chose a mill site just south of where the railroad crossed the river.

In 1882 the lumber company built the Jump River House - a 50-room hotel mainly for its employees which charged $2 per day.

The company also built the Jump River Store, which was touted as the "finest in Price County" at the time, with 12 clerks selling staples, clothes, hats, shoes, furniture and stoves.

The situation was so dire that some people buried their valuables and shuttled women and children to safety on the train to Ogema.

[7]: 109 By 1889 the closest pine timber was running out, so Jump River Lumber built its own logging railroad spur to some prime timber called the Ward Tract about 5 miles southeast of town.

His family ran tanneries in Medford, Perkinstown, Rib Lake, Phillips, and other places.

The Prentice tannery was considered the second largest of its kind in the U.S. - producing 200,000 hides of sole leather at its peak.

The alarm was sounded and the fire department rushed in and saved everything except the dry loft and the hide house.

U.S. Leather quickly rebuilt, but four months later on the night before operation was to resume, another fire broke out, destroying more of the complex.

[7]: 97–98 As timber ran out, more and more settlers scratched farms out of the stump-lands left by logging in the surrounding country.

In 1903 the privately-owned Prentice Creamery began buying milk from nearby farmers and selling butter.

[9]: 3 A fire in 1911 destroyed the post office, Kreuger's saloon, Lundberg's store, the Odd Fellows block, the Jump River Hotel, and other buildings.

In 1912 the Ziegler brothers tried lighting with an electric plant powered by the Jump River, but it worked for only one night.

Located one mile east of the village, the airport handles approximately 1,500 operations per year, with roughly 99% general aviation and 1% air taxi.