Wisconsin County Map: All 72 Counties

Under Wisconsin Statutes Chapter 59, county legislative authority is vested in a Board of Supervisors. Unlike Western states with three-member commissions, Wisconsin county boards are remarkably large: boards frequently have 20 to 38 supervisors, each representing a single supervisory district of roughly equal population.

To provide professional executive leadership, urban counties elect an independent County Executive with veto power over board ordinances. In Dane County (Madison) and Milwaukee County, the County Executive oversees massive budgets funding county highways, regional airports, county zoo facilities, and social service agencies.

Wisconsin counties operate alongside 1,250 incorporated civil towns. Civil towns elect town supervisors, hold annual town meetings, and maintain local rural town roads, requiring county highway commissioners to coordinate paving and snow plowing agreements with town halls.

Menominee County was created in 1959 following federal termination of the Menominee Tribe under the Menominee Termination Act. When termination was reversed in 1973 and federal trust status restored, Menominee County remained as Wisconsin's 72nd county. Coterminous with the reservation, it is 95% covered by sustainably harvested pine and hardwood forests managed by Menominee Tribal Enterprises.

In southwestern Wisconsin lies the famous "Driftless Area" (Vernon, Crawford, Richland, Iowa, Grant). Bypassed by Pleistocene glaciers, these counties feature deeply dissected limestone coulees, cold-water trout streams, and organic dairy farms rather than flat glacial till.

Marathon County in central Wisconsin is the state's largest county by land area at 1,545 square miles, renowned worldwide as the premier producer of American cultivated ginseng and a leader in dairy cheese production.