[2] The county partly overlaps the reservation of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

According to oral histories, the conflict culminated in Ojibwe victory in a battle on Strawberry Island in Flambeau Lake around 1745.

[4] Ojibwe people have continued to live in the area ever since, securing the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation in the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe.

[5] The first recorded white settler was a man named Ashman who established a trading post in Lac du Flambeau in 1818.

[6] In the 1850s migrants from New England, primarily from Vermont and Connecticut, constructed wagon roads and trails through Vilas County including the Ontonagan Mail Trail and a military road from Fort Howard to Fort Wilkins in Copper Harbor, Michigan.

[9] Many dams were built throughout the county to assist loggers as they sent their timber downstream to the lumber and paper mills in the Wisconsin River valley.

The Wisconsin, Flambeau, and Presque Isle Rivers all find their headwaters in Vilas County.

[17] Additionally, there were twelve reported induced abortions performed on women of Vilas County residence in 2017.

[18] The economy in Vilas County is based on tourism centered on its high concentration of lakes and forests.

Logging, forestry, construction and government also account for important parts of the local economy.