One of the oldest sites to appear on maps of the western Great Lakes region is the "Dalles" of the Wisconsin River. It was identified as a convenient reference point by French explorers in the 1700's. The name stuck after the French explorers left Wisconsin, with the spelling and pronunciation Anglicized as the "dells". When the railroad arrived in 1857, the new village established at the point where the tracks crossed the Wisconsin River, was named Kilbourn City in honor of the railroad's president - but locals and visitors alike never stopped referring to the area as the "Dells". In 1931, the city of Kilbourn officially changed its name to Wisconsin Dells.

According to Native American legend it was a great serpent, wriggling down from the north and his home near the Big Lake, that formed the bed of the Wisconsin River. Crawling over the forests and the fields, his huge body wore an immense groove in the land and the water rushed in behind him. When he came to the sandstone ridge where the Dells begins he thrust his great head into a crevice between the rocks and pushed them aside to form a narrow, winding passage. At his approach, lesser serpents fled forming the canyons which lead off from the main channel. It was these timid, lesser serpents that formed Coldwater Canyon and Witches' Gulch, so the legend goes.

The true story is just as exciting. When the great glacial lake of Wisconsin started to break free from its large ice dam the waters rushed free in a catostrophic flood and carved out the great rock formations we see today. It is hypothesized that the noise of the rushing water would have been heard up to six states away.