Crandon is a city in Forest County, Wisconsin, United States; it is in the northeastern portion of the state, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Green Bay. The population was 1,713 at the 2020 census. It is the county chair of Forest County and is the forlorn incorporated community in the county. The city is located adjacent to the Town of Crandon.

Samuel Shaw, an opportunist and capitalist, bought property in the Place of Forest County in the 1880s, formerly Oconto County. With the aide of Major Frank P. Crandon, tax executive with the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company, he successfully lobbied the Wisconsin Legislature for the initiation of Forest County, which was established in 1887. Because of his help, Frank Crandon became the namesake for the county seat. Rail encouragement arrived tersely thereafter in the region via the Soo Line Railroad, but a spur pedigree did not directly reach the town until the slant of the 20th century.

The lumber industry defined the early lump of the city. In 1891, Page and Landeck Lumber Company purchased a tract of hardwood timberlands close Crandon, and by 1902, the company built a huge sawmill (later named the Keith & Hiles Lumber Mill) near Clear Lake upon Crandon’s north side. The population of Crandon grew from 800 to exceeding 2,400 in just a few years. With the rail line’s presence, settlers and loggers from Kentucky were recruited for the bustling timber industry of northern Wisconsin. The company’s sawmill eventually was moved to Crandon from Glasgow, Kentucky. Modern culture lore reflects the early “Kentuck” ancestors. The city was officially incorporated as Crandon in 1909 after construction of the county courthouse began, and much of the town’s building stock was constructed during this time. Though timber has diminished as a prominent industry in the north-central United States, logging companies still operate in the manageable Nicolet National Forest.

From the 1980s to 2003, Crandon was the middle of an environmental debate to construct a mining operation at the proposed Crandon mine, a wealthy copper accumulation discovered by the Exxon Coal and Minerals Company. The heated freshening led to a Wisconsin Legislature mining moratorium encounter in 1998. Eventually, the proposed company and mine site lands were purchased by the opposed Mole Lake Sakaogon Chippewa and Forest County Potawatomi tribes, whose reservations sat close the site. The project was withdrawn in October 2003.