McCord Village was named after Myron McCord who was a Yankee lumberman turned Wisconsin capitalist who became territorial governor of Arizona in the 1890s. Histories of McCord in Wisconisn also feature McCord's second wife: Etta Space. Space was a young and committed mail carrier who married and moved to Arizona with McCord.

Heideman's history of Merrill starts with the Chippewa living at the confluence of the Wisconsin and Pine rivers at Jenny Bull Falls. In the late 1840s, Andrew Warren built a dam, sawmill and established the town of Jenny. Warren was the first but T.B. Scott was the town's most prolific founder. He bought ought Warren and set up his own lumber company. The success of this mill brought more speculators. In 1880 M.C. McCord and H.E. Howe formed the Jenny Lumber Company in what would become the town of Merrill. McCord Village probably developed second half of the 1880s along the Somo river and Soo line. It was not uncommon for upriver towns to be named for lumber barrons. For instance, the next Soo stop to the east was named for Tomahawk's William H. Bradley.

McCord was a lumber baron, owned a newspaper, held political appointments and was elected to others. He also been bankrupted and divorced before marrying Space. Merrill and Wisconsin were short stops on his complex lifetime journey from Pennsylvania to Phoenix. In 1924 the town was just a "station on the Soo Railway." The village "was an early logging center" with a "sawmill...operated by the Flour City Lumber Co.," After this company failed, the mill was sold to DH Greely. The mill burned down. After the mill burned down there were some stores in the town which catered to "neighborhood farmers." In 1924 there was "a small one conducted by Albert H. Morris." There is no mention of the native village in the Jones/McVean history from 1924.

Robert Arndt, a Tripoli resident, wrote a centennial history/memoir of the area published in 2009. There is a six page essay titled "The Indian Village." Arndt includes three photos: a round house "used for the Big Drum Dance," a hexagonal "council building" and the "[w]ater hole hear Indian Village" which is fed by the Little Somo river. The Somo connected McCord to the hatchet shaped Lake Mohawksin, inspiration of Tomahawk, and the broader Wisconsin River valley. Arndt describes McCord as "a Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Huron forest Indian village..." Different peoples living off reservation was probably not uncommon but it is different then the standard (cede-treaty-reservation-allotment) narrative of this region. Arndt's period for the "McCord Indian Village" is "the first half of the twentieth century." The landmarks he provides are Highway 8, McCord and Indian Village Roads and Tripoli. He also describes the CCC camp location which is memorialized today with a sign.

After the logging period, the region was settled by Scandinavians who bought the cut over land from the lumber companies. There is a Finlander Cemetery seven miles west of McCord established at the turn of the century. Tripoli's Pioneer Cemetery at the old Log Church is also populated by Scandinavians from this era. These immigrants were probably farmers who were attracted by the cheap, depopulated and logged land left over from the logging era. The CCC era followed the lumbering (1870s-1900) and agrarian (1900-1933) eras.

The CCC camp [Project #: S-84, CO.#: 1608] started in November 1933. There must have been an early ideological conflict between the agrarian Finns and tree planting feds around McCord during this era. There were two other parties here: the mixed Indian village and the lumber corporations. Much of Wisconsin's northwoods history is about native, extractive, agrarian and conservation modes vying for control of production, transportation networks and natural resources. The future of McCord will also be defined under these terms. The location has sulfide mineral deposits that are as attractive to early twenty first century industry as the old growth forest was to late nineteenth century industry.

Arndt's history of McCord mirrors broader regional themes. Once a town of one hundred and fifty, McCord "was an early logging center." The town's boom time supported rail, lumber and land surveying. There was a hotel, blacksmith, two general stores and "a failed Flour City Lumber company sawmill." It is not unusual for sawmills to become unprofitable after the trees run out. The name "Flour City" is interesting here. Wheat isn't a regional specialty so it is improbable that the sawmill was repurposed. The name probably comes from the Soo Line which has its origins transporting Twin Cities flour east.

The New Deal era Federal Writers Project does not include McCord in its Highway 8 trip parallel to the SOO Line. The FWP describes Tripoli as a "one-street village" of fifty people and "dwindling away." The Depression was "especially severe here" and the town started selling it's lumber town houses to the incoming farmers who "carted [the small frame houses] away on trucks." The transition from a lumber economy to a agrarian economy changed the settlement patterns in most of the Northwoods. The lumber companies went to new stands in the west. Yankee and European immigrants settled the land they left.

This generation of Scandanavians are the most visible first inhabitants of McCord. They left grave yards, the Log Church and a school. The region is on the periphery of three counties who the school jointly. Today the tri-county public high school still stands but it is a seasonal Fireworks dealer. This is probably the joint school district that Arndt was talking about the McCord children attending, now only open during tourist season. These rural schools exist all over the region usually as repurposed housing or town halls. Today, the village itself has been taken over by the University of Wisconsin. Presumably they will protect it as a cultural heritage site. McCord Village is part of the regional history that is ignored.