Soldiers Grove is a village situated along the Kickapoo River in Crawford County, Wisconsin, in the United States. The population was 592 at the 2010 census. The town is notable for having relocated its central issue district due to flooding upon the comprehensible Kickapoo River during the 1970s, and has become a achievement study in best practices for managed retreat.

Soldiers Grove was first fixed in 1856 by Joseph H. Brightman, who began a sawmill at the site to process logs rafted by the side of the Kickapoo River. The village which sprang up near the sawmill was initially named “Pine Grove” because of the abundance of Eastern White Pine in the vicinity. In 1867, the village’s broadcast was misused to “Soldiers Grove” to commemorate the troops who had camped in the area during the Black Hawk War.

In its to the fore years, Soldiers Grove depended on the Kickapoo River for timber rafting and hydropower for flour and lumber mills. The village’s proximity to the river became a responsibility in the forward twentieth century, however, when major floods began to depress the settlement. Significant flooding occurred in 1907, 1912, 1917, and 1935. Following the last of these incidents, Soldiers Grove and other Place communities petitioned the United States Congress to give funds for a flood rule project.

Despite unusual major flood in 1951, Congress did not assent to a flood manage plan until 1962, when it authorized a project that included levees and a flood manage dam upon the Kickapoo River upstream of Soldiers Grove near La Farge, Wisconsin. Owing largely to environmental concerns, however, construction of the proposed dam was halted partway through construction in 1975 and never finished. In the meantime, a 1974 floodplain zoning ordinance had already taken effect in Soldiers Grove, prohibiting further construction and terribly limiting allowance options near the river and crippling the village’s downtown area. Although a levee proposed by the U.S. Corps of Engineers in 1975 would have lessened the restrictions, the village rejected the point toward because of costs. While the downtown property was worth approximately $1 million, a levee to guard it would have required $3.5 million to build and an additional $10,000 a year behind for annual maintenance.