The Franklin Township was organized in 1855 and named after American patriot Benjamin Franklin.  The first settlers were Dewitt Slauter, 1849; T. J. Morgans, Thomas Wells, the first school was at Plain in 1851, the first Church was the German Methodists they held services in 1844, the Catholics built the towns first Church building at Plain in 1861 and. F. Albertus was the first County Chairman.  Location of the first Post Offices were as follows: Logtown, 1859 - July 1860, White Mound, May 1859 - July 1919 and Plain, July 1860 - to present day.

   The ghost village of White Mound once sat on the banks of Honey Creek in the northern part of Franklin.  The stagecoach stopped at the tavern, farmers shopped at the general store.  On Sundays the Methodists held services at their small church.  When the auto replaced the stagecoach, what little there was of White Mound disappeared.  Plain has been a market center of the town and its history and that of Franklin are closely intertwined.

   In 1880, a testy local historian described the inhabitants of Franklin as”… principally foreigners… a very large German representation.  The social and moral condition is similar to that of other localities made up largely of Germans…Work hard all week and have a good time Sundays…” The writer apparently disapproved of the traditional German observance of the Sabbath that included church in the morning and a big Sunday dinner followed by music, dancing, singing, card-playing and beer-drinking.  The attitude reflected a cultural prejudice that existed in the county, but passed very quickly.  Of all immigrant groups, except perhaps the Irish, Germans were the most adept at adapting so-called American ways.  They may have clung to their language for two generations, as did other immigrant groups, but were as American as their native-born neighbors in a very short time.

   Sauk’s hill country soils have been subject to erosion ever since the first plow turned a furrow.  Flooding was also a problem in the narrow, marshless stream channels.  In 1911, a three-foot high wall of water came down Honey Creek and washed away farm buildings, fields and fences.  The flood of 1936 was so bad that Franklin farmer Joe Brickl put a boat in the water at his farm and rowed over a mile down to Plain without ever getting stuck on a fence.

   Conservation programs began in the 1930s and improved considerably in the late 1940s with the development of watershed conservation plan.  The town of Franklin is honeycombed with small streams that drain into three branches of Honey Creek.  Conservation plans were formulated for all the waterways, with the most dramatic plan designed for Honey Creek.  In the mid-1960s, the county soil conservation district outlined a project that would include strip cropping of fields on the slopes, diversions and waterways to control runoff from fields, tree planting and pond construction.  Three dams were to be built to control flooding.  One of these, near White Mound, would create a 104-acre lake to provide recreation as well as flood control.  It would be the centerpiece of a 1,093-acre recreation area with a public beach, picnic grounds and land for hiking around the lake.  The cost of the project, all of which was borne by the federal government, was just more than $1 million.  The park was named in honor of the lost village of White Mound, which stood about 1 mile away from the lake.  Other benefits of the project were realized upstream and downstream.  When heavy rains fell for the winter snow melt it quickly, water no longer rushed down at least one branch of Honey Creek.