A mid-19th century village once stood at this site, where the nearby limestone grist mill and dam remain as its remnants. Vermont millwright and speculator Monroe Palmer purchased fifteen acres of land on the La Crosse River and built the dam and mill in 1852. Three years later, he had a surveyor plat a village of eighteen blocks and 147 lots, naming it Neshonoc after the Ho-Chunk name for this place. Neshonoc was considered for the La Crosse County seat and for a La Crosse and Milwaukee Railroad Company station, and businesses, a church, a school, and homes soon appeared. Palmer and his brother, Dr. Horace Palmer, also built two innovative Octagon houses near the river. In 1858, however, the railroad laid its line closer to the nearby Village of West Salem instead of through Neshonoc. Many residents moved their homes and businesses there, and by the 1890s Neshonoc had almost disappeared from the landscape.