The Lake Superior region has a rich archaeological history. The first people known to inhabit what we now know as Douglas County were a part of the "Old Copper" culture of the middle to late Archaic period (3000-1000 BC). The ancestors of today's Native American population, they utilized the area's natural copper deposits to create tools and ornamental objects that are sometimes found within their mound burial sites and more often found in road cuts and agricultural digging. The successor culture were forest nations who sustained themselves by hunting, fishing and gathering of wild crops. This was the "Woodland" culture which introduced early ceramics and sustained a large population by exploiting wild rice lakes, cranberry bogs, and the naturally occurring roots and berries. The dominant peoples of the region were  Santee Dakotah who were succeeded by the Anishinabe.

    The First European explorers were the French who explored the Great Lakes from their colonial base in Quebec. The French or French Canadians were particularly interested in the furs of the region that were highly valued in Europe. By the 1600s both fur traders and missionaries were regular visitors to the Shores of Lake Superior. It was not uncommon for French traders to take wives from among the local Native American peoples.

    Two sets of wars set the stage for the region as we know it. First of all, the Santee Dakotah and the Anishinabe struggled for control of the Lake Superior country. Eventually the Anishinabe succeeded, driving the Santee to the west and extending their own presence into what would later become Minnesota and the Dakotas. The Anishinabe bands of the Lake Superior area were often called Otchipwe or Ojibwa, and by later American settlers Chippewa. The other wars were fought between Great Britain and France with the goal of controlling North America. One such war, the French and Indian War, was settled by the Treaty of Paris in 1763 which gave the British control of most of the North American continent. Thus the French-speaking people of Canada became British subjects. The war of the American Revolution saw the new American republic gain the territory between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi river in 1783. In fact, the British ignored the treaty and kept control of the western Great Lakes for several decades after the treaty. It was 1832 before the U.S. Army established a post on Madeleine Island.

    Railroad route speculation caused the American government to send George Stuntz to survey the western end of Lake Superior in 1852, and in the following year a town began to emerge at the mouth of the Nemadji River. The Bay of Superior formed a great natural harbor where several groups of speculators hoped to plan a port town and railroad terminus. One of the leaders in that interest was Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The village of Superior quickly emerged and its settlers petitioned the state of Wisconsin to create a new county called Douglas County, carving it out of the vast forested northwestern corner of the state. In 1854 the county was created and Superior was named the center of county government. In that same year the Anishinabe/Ojibwa bands of the region agreed to cede the land for settlement in exchange for reservations and a guarantee of perpetual hunting and fishing rights. This agreement was called the Treaty of 1854.

    The village of Superior went through several phases of growth and decline, responding to the national economic climate and the pressures of the Civil War. The long dreamed of port and rail terminus would not come until 1881, though Superior persisted until the Northern Pacific Railroad finally linked the small town to a rail route reaching out to the Pacific Ocean. The ambition of the early settlers and Senator Douglas were finally achieved. As the village boomed again, it was incorporated as a city in 1887. The flourishing of the port led to the building of several grain elevators, coal docks, and ore docks. Specialized "whaleback" steamships were designed and built there to carry lakes cargos. Three railroad trunk lines and several short lines used the vast rail yards and a dozen European nations sent their migrating people to make their homes there. The county flourished as well. Lumber companies hewed the forests of the county and shipped it to build the cities of a growing America. By 1910 Superior was the second largest city in Wisconsin.

    The first leaders of development were "Yankees" from New England and the middle Atlantic states. Still, from its earliest beginning Douglas County was the goal of newcomers to America. Born in the boom time of the 1850s, newly arrived Irish, Canadians, Germans and Scandinavians were among the first settlers. They joined the indigenous population of metis, people of blended Anishinabe and French Canadian ancestry, who had been in the region for two hundred years. Many of the Native American people chose not to live on the reservations and made their homes in the towns and villages of the county. With the new boom of the 1880s and 1890s the region added Poles, Finns, Norwegians, Belgians, Czechs and Slovaks who came to work the mines and the ships, to cut down the forests, and to farm the land. The descendants of all of those people provide the population of Douglas County today.