They came from the cloud forests of Laos to a paper-mill city on the Wisconsin River, and within a generation Wausau held one of the highest shares of Hmong residents of any city in America. Walk into a Marathon County ginseng shed in autumn and you will hear the soft tones of the Hmong language carried over crates of pale roots. The Hmong in Wausau, Wisconsin did not drift here by accident. They were America’s allies in a war the country tried to forget, and they built a home in the snow.
Wausau, Wisconsin: The Place
Wausau sits in north-central Wisconsin, the seat of Marathon County, straddling the Wisconsin River where Highway 51 runs north toward Lake Superior. Rib Mountain rises to the southwest, a quartzite monadnock that locals ski in winter and climb in summer.
The city was built on lumber and then on paper, a place of brick downtown blocks, frame houses, and tidy German Lutheran churches. For most of the twentieth century it was overwhelmingly the descendants of Germans and Scandinavians. Then, in the late 1970s, a very different kind of newcomer arrived.
How Wausau Became a Hmong City
Before the Hmong
Before the Hmong, Wausau was a homogeneous mill town. The big employers were the paper plants and the insurance company that gave the city its corporate nickname. Marathon County farmers grew potatoes, dairy, and a strange root crop that would later matter enormously to this story: American ginseng.
Cultivated ginseng had taken hold in the county during the early twentieth century, when the Fromm brothers of nearby Hamburg grew it to bankroll their fur business. By the time the Hmong arrived, Marathon County already called itself the ginseng capital of the world, growing the overwhelming majority of the American crop. The fields were waiting for hands that understood patient, painstaking farming.
The Hmong Arrive
The Hmong are a highland people from the mountains of Laos, concentrated historically in Xieng Khouang and Houaphan provinces. During the conflict that spilled out of the Vietnam War, the CIA recruited Hmong fighters under General Vang Pao into what became known as the Secret War in Laos, a clandestine campaign waged from bases like Long Cheng between 1964 and 1973.
When American forces withdrew and Laos fell to communist control in 1975, the Hmong who had fought alongside the United States were marked for reprisal. Tens of thousands fled on foot across the Mekong River into Thai refugee camps. From those camps, beginning in the late 1970s, families were resettled across the United States by voluntary agencies.
In Wausau the sponsors were largely local congregations, working through groups like Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities. A church would adopt a family, find an apartment, fill a refrigerator, and teach the rituals of a Wisconsin winter. There were only a few dozen Southeast Asian newcomers in 1978. By 1980 there were roughly two hundred, by 1982 around four hundred, and by 1984 close to eight hundred.
Wausau at Its Peak
Sponsorship is how a settlement begins. Chain migration is how it grows. Each Hmong family that took root in Wausau became an anchor pulling relatives from other states and from the clans that organise Hmong society: the Xiong, the Vang, the Yang, the Lee, the Thao, and others.
People who had first landed in California or Minnesota moved to central Wisconsin to be near kin, drawn also by affordable housing and farm and factory work. By the early 2000s, roughly twelve percent of Wausau’s residents were Hmong, and around a quarter of the public school district’s students. For a small Midwestern city, those were extraordinary numbers.
The community planted itself in the ginseng economy in particular. Coming from an agrarian highland culture, many Hmong families took work in the gardens of Marathon County, and over the following decades a growing share of the county’s farms came to be run by Hmong growers as older families retired. Patience with a slow crop, it turned out, translated across an ocean. The same dynamic of refugees revitalising an industrial town would later play out for the Burmese who rebuilt parts of Fort Wayne, Indiana and the Somalis who reshaped Lewiston, Maine.
The Change and the Backlash
Rapid change is rarely frictionless, and Wausau’s was not. As Hmong children clustered in a handful of schools, the Wausau school board approved a plan in 1993 to bus students among elementary schools to balance enrolment. The reaction was fierce.
Opponents gathered thousands of signatures, and in a recall election five board members who had backed the plan were voted out. In April 1994 the journalist Roy Beck published a long essay in The Atlantic Monthly titled “The Ordeal of Immigration in Wausau,” which presented the city as a cautionary tale about the costs of refugee resettlement.
The article became a national flashpoint, quoted for years by people who wanted to argue that diversity had broken a heartland town. What the essay could not foresee was the rest of the story. The children at the centre of that busing fight grew up, graduated, opened businesses, and ran for office in the very city that had once debated them.
The Landmarks of Hmong Wausau
Hmong American Center, P.O. Box 1486, Wausau. Founded in 1984 as the Wausau Area Hmong Mutual Association, this organisation grew from an all-volunteer effort into one of the largest Hmong mutual assistance agencies in Wisconsin. It helped a generation of refugees with citizenship, English, and the daily mechanics of American life, and it remains the institutional heart of the community.
Marathon Park, Wausau. Each year the Wausau Area Hmong New Year fills a local venue with traditional dress, the call-and-response courtship of ball-tossing, music, and food. The celebration honours ancestors and the harvest, and it has drawn many thousands of visitors from across the Midwest, a public, joyful answer to the old question of whether the Hmong belonged here.
The ginseng gardens of Marathon County. Spread across the rural townships around Wausau, the shaded ginseng beds are where many Hmong families made their living and, increasingly, became the growers themselves. The crop ties the community to the county’s identity as the ginseng capital of the world.
Hmoob Mart and the Asian groceries of South Third Avenue. A cluster of Hmong and Asian markets serves the community with fresh produce, sticky rice, and homemade Hmong sausage. Hmoob Mart, a family-owned grocery and deli, opened in 2023, one of several newer businesses signalling a confident second and third generation.
Wausau Oriental Foods, 514 Fulton Street. A long-standing neighbourhood market, the kind of unglamorous anchor that tells you a community has put down real roots. These shops are where elders find the herbs and ingredients of home and where younger Hmong reconnect with the flavours of the highlands.
Where the Wausau Hmong Came From
The Hmong of Wausau trace their origins to the mountains of northern and eastern Laos, above all the highlands of Xieng Khouang and Houaphan provinces, with kin scattered toward Luang Prabang and Sayaboury. These were subsistence farmers of upland rice, maize, and opium, organised by clan and lineage long before any of them imagined Wisconsin.
Their road to Wausau ran through the Secret War, the flight across the Mekong, and years in Thai refugee camps such as Ban Vinai before resettlement. Many arrived only after a stop in another American city, then moved to central Wisconsin to rejoin family. The Wausau community is part of a wider Hmong America that includes the largest concentration of all, the Hmong of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the farming families of the Hmong in Fresno, California.
Wausau Today
Today the Hmong are woven into the fabric of Wausau rather than set apart from it. Recent census figures put the city’s Hmong population in the thousands, around nine to twelve percent depending on the count, still among the highest per-capita shares of any city in the country, second nationally only to St. Paul.
The second and third generations are teachers, nurses, business owners, and elected officials. Yee Leng Xiong, a Wausau native, won a seat on the D.C. Everest school board in his teens and went on to serve on the Marathon County Board, part of a cohort of Hmong American leaders that would have been unimaginable to the recall voters of 1993. Mary Thao has served on the Wausau school board.
The Atlantic once held Wausau up as proof that immigration was an ordeal. Fifty years after the first families stepped off the plane into the Wisconsin cold, the city tells a quieter and truer story: that a people who lost a country can build a home, and that the home, in time, becomes the country.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did the Hmong settle in Wausau, Wisconsin?
The Hmong in Wausau, Wisconsin were refugees from Laos who had been America’s allies in the Secret War, and they were resettled there from the late 1970s largely by local churches and voluntary agencies. Once a few families took root, chain migration drew relatives from other states, and farm and factory work plus affordable housing kept them there.
Is Wausau still a Hmong city today?
Yes. The Hmong make up roughly nine to twelve percent of Wausau’s residents, one of the highest per-capita shares in the United States, behind only St. Paul, Minnesota. The community now spans three generations and includes business owners, teachers, and elected officials.
What are the most famous Hmong landmarks in Wausau?
Key anchors include the Hmong American Center, founded in 1984 as the Wausau Area Hmong Mutual Association, and the annual Wausau Area Hmong New Year celebration. The ginseng gardens of Marathon County and Asian markets such as Hmoob Mart and Wausau Oriental Foods are also central to community life.
Where in Laos did the Wausau Hmong come from?
Most trace their roots to the mountainous provinces of northern and eastern Laos, especially Xieng Khouang and Houaphan, with kin spread toward Luang Prabang and Sayaboury. They fled after 1975 through Thai refugee camps before being resettled in the United States.
When did the Hmong first arrive in Wausau?
The first Southeast Asian refugees, most of them Hmong, began arriving in Wausau in the late 1970s. The population grew quickly, from a few dozen in 1978 to roughly eight hundred by 1984, and to about twelve percent of the city by the early 2000s.
If your family’s story passed through Wausau, or any of the places the Hmong made home after the long road out of Laos, Atlas of Home can help you trace that journey. From the highlands of Xieng Khouang to the ginseng fields of Marathon County, to wherever you are now. Explore your story →
Sources include the Hmong in Wisconsin overview and the Wisconsin Historical Society.