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Camp Douglas began shortly after the Milwaukee Road crossed Juneau in the mid 1850's, and the location of the settlement was determined by the route of the tracks. They skirted the bluffs of southwestern Juneau because it was easier to lay track on the flat sands than through the hills and valleys of the coulee region. In addition, the railroad required a lot of wood, first for construction itself and then to fuel locomotives. The hills alongside the tracks were covered with oak, hickory, birch and hard maple that were excellent for fuel or construction. Lumbering camps were established along the right-of-way to meet these needs and none was more favorably located than Camp Douglas. It had its back to the hardwood-covered hills and the tracks at its feet.
A number of loggers were already cutting wood and stacking it alongside the tracks at the foot of "Chinaman's Rock" when James Douglas, his nineteen-year old daughter Ann Eliza, and "Amp" Chamberlain stepped off the train in 1864. Douglas took possession of some unfinished shacks nearby and organized a logging camp with Chamberlain as clerk and Ann Eliza as cook. He hired woodcutters off the trains and also from the nearby Orange Mills community which had been settled prior to his arrival. One of these loggers was a veteran of the Maine woods named John Singleton, who joined hands with Ann Eliza at Camp Douglas's first marriage in 1866.
Douglas soon moved his camp closer to the tracks and set up a sawmill powered by a horse on a treadmill. The camp took its first steps towards becoming a genuine village when a telegraph office and some shacks for railroad section hands were constructed. This cluster of buildings became known as "old Camp Douglas."
In the mid-1870's the West Wisconsin Railroad pushed its way south from Warrens and crossed the Milwaukee Road track about one-half mile east of "Old Camp." One of the surveyors for the new line was Tom Whereatt who liked the junction well enough to settle there. He opened a store, a depot was built and the telegraph office was relocated nearby. The new village was called Douglas Camp Junction. In time the "junction" was dropped and "Camp Douglas" was officially born. Despite its proximity to the Wisconsin National Guard base at Camp Williams, Camp Douglas does not owe its name to the military. It began as a logging camp and not an army establishment.
Camp Douglas soon became one of the most important and busiest railroad junctions in central Wisconsin. It was the place where the north-south line of the Omaha Railroad (later known as the Chicago and Northwestern) crossed the east-west line of the Milwaukee Road. L. W. Brown opened a two-story hotel to accommodate travelers changing trains. It was the biggest building in the village and the site of its first post office and saloon. About a dozen families lived at Camp Douglas when Brown's Hotel opened in the mid-1870's.
In the 1880's growth continued with the addition of two hardware stores, a meat market, a livery and other mercantile establishments.
With its excellent statewide rail connections and an abundance of low-priced, level land nearby, Camp Douglas was chosen as the site of the Wisconsin Military Reservation in 1888. The Volk Field Air National Guard training facility got underway shortly after World War II and it was named in honor of Lieutenant Jerome A. Volk, the first Wisconsin Air National Guard pilot killed in Korea. Local people sold produce to the camp and found work there while National Guard trainees were special patrons of local businesses. One memorable Camp Douglas amusement for guardsmen was a large wooden chute down which men slid while mounted on sandbags. The loading and unloading of Guard equipment and personnel--the horses, artillery and men in uniform--were also a special feature of community life.
The Western Union Relay Station was also a special part of Camp Douglas life and its relay was the largest of its kind west of Chicago. Since equipment powerful enough to send signals over long distances had yet to be developed, telegraph messages were relayed on at places like Camp Douglas. The station was important enough for Western Union to purchase and maintain five houses for its telegraphers at Camp Douglas.
The community continued to grow in the 1890's but in 1891 a fire broke out above the saloon, spread to other buildings and destroyed the entire business district. Despite this setback, Camp Douglas continued to progress. Businesses were rebuilt and enlarged and the population increased to 333.
In 1893 the electors voted to incorporate a village government but the first village meeting was not held until 1899.
Camp Douglas was always a railroader's town, but it is also important to highway travelers. In the early days of automobile travel, when Highway 12 was developing into the main motor link between Chicago and Minneapolis, a red and white highway beacon was mounted on a pole south of the Milwaukee Road tracks at Camp Douglas. It served as a guiding light for motorists on the highway and aviators in the sky.
Camp Douglas began as a community because of its location on the railroad tracks between the bluffs and the flatlands. When the railroad declined after W.W.II, Camp Douglas changed from a village depending on the railroad to one depending on the highways. Today Interstate 90-94 also runs alongside of Camp Douglas. Where people used to depart from trains, today they bike along the wonderful Omaha Bike Trail.
