Wausau ( WAW-saw) is a city in and the county seat of Marathon County, Wisconsin, United States. The Wisconsin River divides the city into east and west. The city’s suburbs attach Schofield, Weston, Mosinee, Maine, Rib Mountain, Kronenwetter, and Rothschild.

As of the 2020 census, Wausau had a population of 39,994. It is the core city of the Wausau Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which includes everything of Marathon County and had a population of 134,063 at the 2010 census.

This area has for millennia changed hands between various indigenous peoples. The historic Ojibwe (also known in the United States as the Chippewa) occupied it in the epoch of European encounter. They had a lucrative fur trade for decades in the same way as French colonists and French Canadians. After the French and Indian War this trade was dominated by British-American trappers from the eastern seaboard.

The Wisconsin River first drew European-American settlers to the area during the mid-19th century as they migrated west into the Great Lakes region subsequently construction of the Erie Canal in New York State. This provided a route for products from the region to the large New York and supplementary eastern markets. The area had been called “Big Bull Flats” or “Big Bull Falls” by French explorers, who were the first Europeans here. They named it for the long rapids in the river, which created many bubbles, called bulle in French. By an 1836 harmony with the United States, the Ojibwe ceded much of their lands in the Place to federal ownership. It was sold to non-Native peoples. Wausau, from Ojibwe “waasa”, means “a faraway place”.