715 Area Code – Eau Claire, Wisconsin: Location, Time Zone & History

Ask a local and they'll tell you 715 belongs to Wisconsin's Northwoods, the lakes-and-forest region stretching from Eau Claire and Wausau up toward Superior and Rhinelander. The code dates to October 1947, one of the original 86 assigned nationwide, when it covered all of northern Wisconsin while 414 handled the south. A 1955 border rearrangement between those two codes carved out area code 608 for southwestern Wisconsin, including Madison, trimming 715's southern edge.

After that, 715 went an unusually long 63 years without further change, one of the longest-serving unmodified area codes in the country, until number exhaustion in the sparsely populated north prompted an all-services overlay. Ten-digit dialing became mandatory on July 17, 2010, and the 534 overlay began service that August 14, covering the identical footprint without touching existing 715 numbers.

The region's economy runs on forestry and paper products, dairy and row-crop agriculture, manufacturing, and lakes-and-forest tourism, with several University of Wisconsin campuses adding a higher-education presence. Eau Claire also has a musical claim to fame as the home of Justin Vernon's Grammy-winning band Bon Iver and the Eaux Claires festival he co-founded.