EAU CLAIRE

city, seat (1856) of Eau Claire county, west-central Wisconsin, U.S. It lies at the confluence of the Eau Claire (Clear Water, so named by 18th-century French trappers and traders) and Chippewa rivers, 90 miles (145 km) east of St. Paul, Minn. Settled in the 1840s and laid out in 1855, it developed a lumber economy. With the exhaustion of local forests in the 1890s, it turned to manufacturing (notably rubber tires) and food processing. Eau Claire is also the trading centre for a large dairying region. It is the seat of Chippewa Valley Technical College (1912) and the University of WisconsinEau Claire (1916). Carson Park, a peninsula on Half Moon Lake, contains the Chippewa Valley Museum and the Paul Bunyan Logging Camp, a replica of the town's past. Inc. 1872. Pop. (1990) city, 56,856; Eau Claire MSA, 137,543; (1994 est.) city, 58,476; (1995 est.) Eau Claire MSA, 142,663.