| Bad Axe River | |
|---|---|
 The North Fork of the Bad Axe River | |
| Location | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Wisconsin |
| County | Vernon |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Source | |
| • location | Genoa |
| • coordinates | 43°31′40″N 91°09′51″W / 43.52778°N 91.16417°W |
| Mouth | |
• location | Mississippi River |
• coordinates | 43°31′12.91″N 91°13′40.28″W / 43.5202528°N 91.2278556°W |
The Bad Axe River is a 4.2-mile-long (6.8 km)[1] tributary of the Mississippi River in southwestern Wisconsin in the United States. "Bad axe" is a translation from the French, "la mauvaise hache", but the origin of the name is unknown.[2][3] The river's mouth at the Mississippi was the site of the Battle of Bad Axe, an 1832 U.S. Army massacre of Sauk and Fox Indians at the end of the Black Hawk War.
- ^ U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map Archived 2012-03-29 at the Wayback Machine, accessed May 13, 2011
- ^ Kellogg, Louise Phelps. "Derivation of County Names" in Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for 1909, pages 219-231.
- ^ Butterfield, History of Vernon County (Springfield, 1884), p. 132.