Medford is a city and county seat of Taylor County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 4,349 at the 2020 census. The city is loc…Medford is a city and county seat of Taylor County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 4,349 at the 2020 census. The city is located mostly within the boundaries of the Town of Medford. Medford is located on historic Ojibwe forest land acquired by the United States in the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters. In 1864, the federal government authorized a grant of some 837,000 acres of this land to subsidize railway construction through the area. The Wisconsin Central Railroad Company, controlled by Boston financier Gardner Colby, obtained the land grant and constructed the railroad in the 1870s. The railroad company and a local lumber milling company laid out the city of Medford in 1875 and sold lots for twenty-five dollars each. The railroad named the new settlement after Medford, Massachusetts, the hometown of a railroad official. Medford shipped over 1.5 million board feet of lumber by rail within a year of its establishment, and the area was soon clear cut for farming.
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