Green Bay, Wisconsin

• 1. Introduction

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  Green Bay, Wisconsin sits at the mouth of the Fox River, where that waterway meets the southwestern corner of Lake Michigan. In 1634, a French explorer named Jean Nicolet paddled into this inlet and stepped onto a shore that would eventually become one of the most recognizable place names in American sports and industry. What drove him here was not a search for a city. He was looking for a shorter route to China.

  The questions worth asking about Green Bay go deeper than football. How did a remote fur-trading post on a Great Lake become the toilet paper capital of the world? Why do Belgians figure so prominently in its immigrant story? And what explains a small-town franchise that has outlasted nearly every rival from its era and still plays in the biggest league in American sports?

• 2. Nicolet and the Bay of Stinking Waters

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  Samuel de Champlain, the founder of New France, sent Jean Nicolet west in 1634 with two tasks: broker peace with the Ho-Chunk people and scout a trade route to China. Champlain had heard that the Ho-Chunk, who called themselves "People of the Sea", must live somewhere near an ocean. That logic pointed west.

  Nicolet's route took him up the Ottawa River, through Lake Nipissing, down the French River to Lake Huron, and then through the straits of Michilimackinac into Lake Michigan. He is believed to have landed at Red Banks, near where the modern city sits today. He named the small trading post he founded La Baye des Puants, which translates from French as "the Bay of Stinking Waters".

  When Nicolet arrived, he encountered two Indigenous peoples. The Menominee occupied the territory around the bay. The Ho-Chunk, also known as the Winnebago, spoke a Siouan language and had an organized society. Women among the Ho-Chunk harvested wild rice that grew along the riverbanks and processed game. They also held political power: no group decision could be made without the agreement of at least half the women. Nicolet stayed with them for about a year before returning to Quebec.

  A few months after Nicolet left, Champlain died, and the journeys to La Baie Verte stopped for decades. A Jesuit Mission was established in the area in 1671, a fort was added in 1717, and the town was formally incorporated in 1754.

• 3. French Roots, British Name

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  Great Britain took control of the town in 1761 during what North Americans called the French and Indian War. The first permanent European settler in present-day Wisconsin arrived four years later: Charles Michel de Langlade, a man of mixed French-Canadian and Odawa heritage who had grown up among his mother's people and become a war chief. He moved his family from Quebec to Green Bay in 1765 and is remembered as the "Founder and Father of Wisconsin".

  Langlade's background placed him at the intersection of French, Indigenous, and British worlds. He is credited with planning the ambush of British General Edward Braddock and George Washington during the French and Indian War, fighting on the French side while his Odawa allies were with the French. When British rule arrived, the transition was relatively smooth for the French residents. The British needed French fur traders, and the fur traders needed British goodwill.

  The name change happened quietly. French residents had called the settlement "La Bey." British fur traders began calling it "Green Bay" because the water and the shoreline turned green in early spring. The old name gradually disappeared.

  Under British rule the fur trade flourished. Licenses, which France had issued sparingly, were issued freely by the British to both nationalities. From 1763 to 1780, Green Bay was a prosperous community. Its residents produced their own food, built cottages, and held dances. The region did not formally pass to the United States until the 1783 treaty that ended the American Revolutionary War.

• 4. Canals, Immigrants, and a Press

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  The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, linked New England to the Great Lakes and changed Green Bay's trajectory. New England farmers poured through it into Wisconsin. The end of the Black Hawk War in 1832 accelerated that settlement further, opening land and encouraging migrants.

  Wisconsin's first newspaper, The Green Bay Intelligencer, was started in 1833 by Albert Ellis and John V. Suydam. The borough of Green Bay was created in 1838, combining the American Fur Company town of Astor with Navarino, which had been platted by Daniel Whitney. John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company had dominated the region's commerce before Wisconsin became a state in 1848. After statehood, the economy pivoted toward lumbering.

  Throughout the 1850s, stories of cheap land and fertile soil drew waves of European immigrants. The greatest concentration came from Belgium. Between 1880 and 1910, large numbers of Belgians continued arriving. Significant numbers of English immigrants, many of whom had lived first in Canada, came to Green Bay during that same thirty-year period, typically arriving as large families. Green Bay also had a larger proportion of first-generation French immigrants than any other city in Wisconsin at that time.

  Three railroads reached Green Bay in the 1860s: the Chicago and North Western, the SOO Line, and the Milwaukee Road. The railroad network opened the port to international trade and helped the paper industry grow into the city's dominant employer. The first paper mill was built in 1865. The town was incorporated as the city of Green Bay on the 27th of February 1854, at which point its population was approaching two thousand residents.

• 5. Toilet Paper Capital of the World

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  Green Bay earned the unofficial title of "Toilet Paper Capital of the World" because of the density of paper companies operating there in the 19th and 20th centuries. Northern Paper Mills, founded in Green Bay in 1901, became the largest producer of toilet paper in the world under the name Northern Tissue by 1920. The company went further in the early 1930s, offering what it marketed as the first splinter-free toilet paper.

  Northern Paper Company was among the earliest firms, alongside Fort Howard Paper Company and Hoberg Paper Company. The paper industry's grip on the local economy had a significant side effect: it helped Green Bay avoid the worst of the Great Depression. When factories elsewhere were idling, Green Bay's mills kept running.

  Iron smelting in charcoal kilns briefly rivaled the timber industry in the 1860s-1870s, and the port handled increasing quantities of fuel, feed, and lumber. But paper proved more durable. Today major paper producers with a presence in Green Bay include Georgia-Pacific and Procter & Gamble. The Port of Green Bay handled 1.99 million tons of cargo in 2015, with coal, limestone, salt, and cement among the primary shipments moving through it.

• 6. The Packers and Small-Town Survival

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  Indian Packing Company, a meat processor, gave its name to a football team founded in Green Bay in 1919. The Green Bay Packers joined the National Football League in 1921 and remain, over a century later, the only surviving small-town franchise in any of the four major American sports leagues.

  Lambeau Field, the team's home stadium, was built in 1957 and stands 232 feet tall. The Packers are listed among the city's major employers, alongside health care systems and manufacturing firms. The team's presence shapes the city's identity in ways that few professional sports franchises manage anywhere.

  In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Green Bay to honor the city's tercentenary, the three-hundredth anniversary of Nicolet's arrival. The city's population was 52,735 by 1950. Sports beyond football are also present: the Green Bay Gamblers junior hockey team was founded in 1994, and the Green Bay Rockers summer college baseball team began play in 2007. East High School and West High School have played Wisconsin's longest consecutively-played high school football rivalry, a game that has continued since 1905.

• 7. A City in Change

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  The 2020 census counted 107,395 people in Green Bay, making it the third-most populous city in Wisconsin. The metropolitan area holds an estimated 335,000 residents. About 14% of the city falls within the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin reservation.

  The city's demographic composition has shifted substantially across recent decades. In 2000, White residents accounted for roughly 83% of the population. By 2020 that figure had dropped to 66.6%, with Hispanic or Latino residents comprising 17.9% of the population. Per the 2022 American Community Survey, the German American population was 29,352, the Mexican American population was 14,265 (comprising over 75% of the city's Latino population), and the Hmong American population was 2,822.

  As of 2016-2020 estimates, the median household income was $52,214. About 15.5% of the population lived below the poverty line. The largest single employer as of 2021 was Bellin Health, with 4,500 employees, followed by Schneider National with 3,769.

  In 2000, the American Religion Data Archive reported that 71.5% of Green Bay's population was Catholic, with Lutherans at 16.4%. The city is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, with Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral serving as its mother church. The Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, with 2,104 employees, ranks among the city's top employers, a reminder that the people Jean Nicolet met in 1634 remain an integral part of Green Bay's present.