[6] Stanley was settled and platted in 1881 in the Town of Delmar when the Wisconsin Central Railroad built its line through Chippewa County.

The settlement was named for Lemuel C. Stanley, a merchant and railroad man from Chippewa Falls who was involved in that first plat.

[7] The main early businesses were a small steam sawmill and some charcoal kilns built by the York Iron Company in 1887.

[9] Starting in the 1860s, Northwestern had sawed its lumber at its company town Porter's Mills, on the Chippewa River four miles below Eau Claire.

Timber stands still remained on land away from the rivers, so Northwestern switched its model from river-logging to railroad-logging, and shut down Porter's Mills.

[12][13]) The mill in Stanley sawed wood until 1920, when Northwestern's timber holdings in the area were largely exhausted.

[citation needed] In 1897, attracted by rail connections and the supply of hemlock bark, the U.S. Leather Company opened a tannery in Stanley which employed 200 men and by 1908 tanned 75,000 hides shipped in from Chicago to South America.

[10] On May 18, 1906, a fire started in one of the Northwest Lumber Company buildings east of the current Chapman Lake in what is now Fandry Park.

[15] The Northwestern Lumber Company had started a brickyard around 1900, digging its clay north of Chapman Park's location.

After the fire in 1906, production increased greatly to rebuild Stanley and buildings as far off as Eau Claire and Auburndale.

[16] On May 20, 2002, the City of Stanley annexed a portion of land in the Town of Thorp in Clark County.