Portage is a city in and the county chair of Columbia County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 10,581 at the 2020 census, making it the largest city in Columbia County. The city is allocation of the Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Portage was named for the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway, a portage in the midst of the Fox River and the Wisconsin River, which was ascribed by Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet during their discovery of a route to the Mississippi River in 1673. The city’s slogan is “Where the North Begins.”

The Native American tribes that in imitation of lived here, and higher the European traders and settlers, took advantage of the lowlands amongst the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers as a natural “portage”. This is reflected in native names for the town, such as the Menominee name Kahkāmohnakaneh, which means “at the rapid cut”. In May 1673, Jacques Marquette associated the expedition of Louis Jolliet, a French-Canadian explorer, to find the Mississippi River. They departed from St. Ignace upon May 17, with two canoes and five voyageurs of French-Indian ancestry (Métis). They followed Lake Michigan to Green Bay and stirring the Fox River, nearly to its headwaters. From there, they were told to portage their canoes a turn your back on of slightly less than two miles through marsh and oak plains to the Wisconsin River. Later, French fur traders described the place as “le portage”, which eventually lent itself to the say of the community. As a portage, this community developed as a middle of commerce and trade; later, a canal was constructed to help this trade. When the railroads came through, the community continued in this role.

Portage emerged at this place because of its unique incline along the one and a half mile strip of marshy floodplain in the middle of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. By the fade away of the 17th century, the Fox-Wisconsin waterway, linked at The Portage, served as the major fur trade thoroughfare amid Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. It was not until the 1780s and 1790s that traders built their posts and warehouses at each fall of The Portage. In the to the fore 19th century Portage was primarily populated by Métis. In 1828, the federal government ascribed the strategic economic importance of The Portage and built Fort Winnebago at the Fox River end. After 15 years of controversy, Winnebago settlement (now Portage) won the county chair in 1851. The community incorporated as Portage City in 1854.