Zoning in Forest County, Wisconsin

What's confirmed: Crandon, Lincoln, and Wabeno

Forest County's Zoning-Land Use office administers a General Zoning Ordinance most recently revised in May 2023, adopted under Wis. Stat. §§ 59.03, 59.69, 59.694, 281.31, 293.33, and 236.45. The county's own materials state directly that it handles zoning for the City and Town of Crandon, and separately direct zoning inquiries for the Town of Lincoln to the county's Land Conservation department -- meaning Lincoln, at least as of this research, is treated as county-zoned rather than operating its own ordinance. An independent, search-indexed local-government listing likewise describes the Town of Wabeno as under county zoning jurisdiction rather than having a separate town ordinance.

What's genuinely unresolved: a documented history of towns opting in and out, and Nashville specifically

Wisconsin's zoning structure allows a town to withdraw from county zoning and adopt its own ordinance, or to have never joined county zoning in the first place, and Forest County's own historical record shows this has actually happened here. A county planning document dating to approximately 2015 (itself recounting a 1980 zoning-ordinance revision) stated plainly that the 1980 revision "has not been accepted by any of the towns in Forest County" as of that writing, and that the Towns of Lincoln and Nashville had each separately enacted their own town-level zoning ordinances, submitted to and approved by the county board -- a genuinely different arrangement from a single ordinance covering the whole county.

That's in real tension with the more current picture for Lincoln (now apparently routed through the county) described above, which suggests something changed between roughly 2015 and today -- Lincoln may have since repealed its own ordinance and joined county zoning, for instance, though this research pass could not confirm the mechanics or timing of any such change. Nashville is the more consequential open question: it's the town where the Sokaogon Chippewa (Mole Lake) reservation sits, and this pass found no current confirmation of whether Nashville is now county-zoned, still operates its own town ordinance, or has no general zoning at all. The remaining towns in the county -- Argonne, Armstrong Creek, Blackwell, Caswell, Freedom, Hiles, Laona, Popple River, and Ross -- were not independently confirmed either way by this research pass.

What to actually do before relying on a specific parcel's zoning

1. Call Forest County Zoning-Land Use ((715) 478-3893) and ask directly, by name, which ordinance -- the county's General Zoning Ordinance or a town-adopted one -- currently governs the specific town your parcel sits in.
2. Separately call or visit the specific town's clerk or town hall to confirm the same thing from that side, since a county office may not have the most current record of a town's own zoning action (or repeal of one).
3. If your parcel is in or near the Town of Nashville, ask specifically -- this research pass could not confirm Nashville's current zoning status, and it's also the town containing the Sokaogon Chippewa reservation, adding a second layer of due diligence (see our tribal-trust-land-status page for this county).
4. Regardless of which general-zoning regime applies, remember that statewide NR 115 shoreland zoning (1,000 ft of a lake/pond/flowage, 300 ft of a river/stream) and SPS 383 POWTS septic rules apply on top of local zoning no matter what a specific town does or doesn't have -- confirm those separately.
5. If buying near a national forest or county forest boundary, or on land that looks like managed timberland, ask about Managed Forest Law enrollment status in the same call, since MFL status can affect both taxation and permitted public access on the parcel.