Railroads enjoyed numerous railroad grants from 1850-1870s. Consequently, Manitowish Waters created a private fire company run by town citizens, which remains as one of the few private fire companies in the state of Wisconsin. In the quest for brevity, no further analysis of phase 2 logging will included. Paul Brenners Interview-the Finale. Whenever they got to wherever they were going to log they put in an extra spur and then the camp was set up for whatever length of time that they were going to log in that area. In 1902, Ironwood resident, James Albright recorded that Fox Island was eroding from the dam raising water more than 12 feet for logging operations. Where ever possible, the citations of these historians will be included to illustrate the Manitowish Waters area river drive logging. The most storied and closest local lumber mill was Buswell on the southeast shore of Papoose Lake. Page 40. There are two camps shown: Lehey's Camp T36 N, R5 E, Section 6, and Lehey's Little Rice Camp T36 N, R5 E, Section 22. Then, Today, tax records reveal that Fox Island is slightly larger than 9 acres. In Robert Walkers version, the contest takes place in a logging camp on the Wolf River. So they'd keep the gates closed on the dam until they'd get a head of water and a load of logs behind it. More specifics regarding logging communities, mills, practices, technologies and traditions need to be explored, utilizing the thorough document by historians Paul Brenner, Michael Dunn and Malcolm Rosholt. Forest and Stream. Before surveyor documents could be recorded with the government, private timber cruisers had previously conveyed to clandestine loggers the, rich timber resources of our community. Koller Library. The Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University. This particular picture shows a man that was both scaling the log which means that he was measuring the board feet that were in the log and at his toe you can see a small hammer. With over 1,000 lakes, and 68,447 total acres of water, Oneida County is an angler's and boater's paradise. Therewas no hour off for lunch, but twenty minutes atthe most with scarcely time for a smoke. Needless to say a hard work life in the woods back then. (I think the working population of the Pine woods is the lowest, filthiest and most degraded class of man I have ever seen in any part of the United States). Page 74-75. Even though, railroad construction of the Chicago Northwestern reached Lac Du Flambeau in 1888 and Powell and Manitowish in 1889, phase 1 river drive logging dominated Manitowish Waters logging until at least 1900. access previously uncut hardwoods and red pines while also removing white pines too distant from river systems. Timothy Sasse. The lumber industry had previously relied on pine trees and spared hardwoods. Thiswas almost a sacred rite because the teamster tookpride in the appearance of his horses, argued aboutthem, and lied about how smart they were. 1) Oconto takes . Vilas County. Looking toward the dam while seated at the Pea Patch, imagine the experiences of 1890 tourists at a river drive lumber camp. Wisconsin trees were made into doors, window sashes, furniture, beams and shipping boxes. Interested readers are highly encouraged to explore more local logging history from Brenner and Dunn at: http://mwlibrary.blogspot.com/search/label/logging. (80) In Manitowish Waters, fire prevention and suppression has always been a community effort. 13 http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/maps/id/19986/rec/1. Lumberjack Steam Train and Camp 5 Museum operates seasonally June - October. Flancher and the Peggy Line by Michael Dunn. During phase 2 railroad logging, Manitowish Waters became a secondary logging destination and logging slowed compared to other regional communities. Not surprisingly, local pioneers and logging operators accessed timber on the vast properties of absentee land and lumber barons, trespassing to capture their slice of the American Dream.(17) Later, as communities sprung-up in counties where the Pine Land Ring held significant lands, county agents retaliated with manipulative tax policies, high public salaries, and new public works projects which cut into cartel profit margins. map or consult forester for additional . See more images, essays, newspapers and records about the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in Wisconsin. The museum was established in 1969. Consequently, investors Richard Southgate and Marvin Hugitte selected Loveless as caretaker for their uniquely ambitious railroad/canal retreat on Little Trout Lake. Only in operation for 5 years, this short-lived community has become a historic pop-culture favorite, with a dedicated Facebook page: Ticket to Buswell. Wisconsin Historical Society. The 15 minute ride takes you over bridges through the woods to the original Logging Camp. by Michael Dunn III, Michael Dunn cover letter to 2017 narratives. Typifying a pioneer familys struggles, hard work, ingenuity, and vison; ultimately achieving the American Dream. One can mingle with clean wickedness without personal discomfort, but dirty vulgarity is far worse in consequence. This specialized spur was sometimes referred to as the BIA line because it was federally subsidized, officially constructed to help the Ojibwa community in Lac Du Flambeau. (55) Turner further argues, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave-- the meeting point between savagery and civilization.(56) Turners late 19th century scholarship guided frontier analysis for nearly a century. The Turtle Lake Company began operations out of Winchester in June of 1909. That meant laundry day, when the lumberjacks could wash and disinfect their clothes in pots of boiling water. More Wisconsin maps and GPS data layers are available here. E Hough, continued his travels to Woodruff, to pick-up a mail order camera and catch a train to Star Lake for more 1895 winter adventures. The small towns of the Western frontier are tough, but they have a brilliant wickedness which gives them a fascination of their own. As Wisconsin was buying old timber lands and consolidating government lands to create a new Wisconsin Forest Reserve (later the Northern Highland Forest) timber plunders continued to target government lands. (71). The MWHS uses specialized archival software to provideeveryone access to historic images, narratives, stories, journals, maps, publications and media, both online and in paper form at the Koller Library in Manitowish Waters, WI. Please excuse the unvarnished portrayal of laborers in lumber camps, possibly undermining the romantic view of lumberjacks often shared in books and films. The logs then moved through the mill on a second track, as first a circular head saw and then smaller chainsaw cut the logs into planks. Madison, Wisconsin 53715-1255, View RecollectionWisconsins profile on Facebook, View UCmHTkq5FI2puKBqT_TDQ3Dgs profile on YouTube, The Toolkit Blog: Digital Projects Support, The Iconography of the Chippewa Valley Lumberjack 1869 to 1913, Early Statehood, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, Industrialization, Agriculture, Urbanization, and Labor, The Wisconsin Idea, the Progressive Era, and World War I, http://wisconsinhistoricalmarkers.blogspot.com/2013/03/wabeno-logging-museum.html, Things to do in the Wisconsin Northwoods-Watch a Lumberjack - Linda Aksomitis, http://smulansblog.blogspot.se/2006/09/det-kom-ett-brev.html. An early sportsman adventurer traveling from the rail stops at Eagle River to Manitowish by canoe describes the Rest Lake camp in 1890: The dam was 3 miles below and we were trying to reach it before dark. View a 1937 guide to CCC camps in Wisconsin and a 1939 recruitment poster elsewhere at wisconsinhistory.org Rosholt, Malcolm. The collusion, bureaucratic manipulation, price fixing, and specially interest abuses that followed created a powerful cartel; defining both land policy and logging into the 20th century. Begin or dive deeper into researching your family tree, Learn about the spaces, places, & unique story of your community, The largest North American Heritage collection after the Library of Congress. Skilled drivers prodded them along. State of Wisconsin Collections. 48 https://mwhistory.org/2016/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Forest-and-Stream-1895-logging-trapping-Buck.pdf. Koller Library. "History". 1943. Published by Friends of the Library, Boulder Junction WI, 1996. The new systematic fire prevention and suppression practices Griffith developed were also supported by local residents. Dr. & Mrs E.A. By the 1850s, timber cruisers were sharing with land agents and logging interests both our communitys abundant timber and quality river driving opportunities. Humbly, avoiding drinking and brawling, Loveless worked diligently as a builder, hunter, lumber camp cook, trapper, market fisherman and guide.(82). Koller Library. 33 Doolittle, Shirley. View Map Email. Nov 27, 2020. Many lumber companies accessed their timber resources using these rail lines. Enjoy a nice lunch at the Choo-Choo hut. Paul Benner. 1902. Quiet is there unknown. Each day, with so many variables that could go wrong: experience, resourcefulness, courage and grit were the human resources required to succeed. Cal LaPorte shared that during phase 3 logging residents would take 20 foot pike poles and probe the lake bottoms discovering enough timber to mill into homes and businesses. Most logging crews in Wisconsin operated only in the winter, taking advantage of hard, frozen ground to haul heavy loads of logs on sleighs rather than wheeled wagons. Sometimes railroad spurs (both narrow and standard gauge) were built by mills in addition to the railroads; so owners of numerous rail lines could charge loggers for a single job. Michael J. Dunn, III. Phase 3 loggers needed a local mill to process their lumber and Robert Loveless had the perfect operation. In 1884, Peter Vance claimed to settle on Vance (Dam) Lake after traveling by canoe from Menomonee WI or Eau Claire WI as a timber cruiser. 2. They figured one log out of ten never made it to the mill because they either sank or they got stuck in places where they couldn't get them back into the main current. This defining chapter of Manitowish Waters history is both complex and lengthy. LaFave family histories are populated with stories of travel up Rice Creek to Buswell. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in Wisconsin. In his book 100 Years of Pictorial and Descriptive History of Wisconsin Rapids (1934), T. A. Taylor describes a typical menu: In the early camp days the main bill of fare was salt pork, navy beans, and flour. Wisconsin's other great lumbering region consisted of the watersheds of the Black and Chippewa Rivers in the northwest. Logs were rafted by steamboat and/or skidded by horses to this phase 2 railroad spur line, establishing one of the most distant spur lines from the Chicago Northwestern Railroad. See and touch history at Historic Sites, Museums and special events, Restore your historic home or property, get tax credits, renovation tips. 9 https://mwhistory.org/menu-page-for-maps-and-journals/maps-folder/original-survey-maps-from-the-manitowish-waters-area-1860s/manitowish-waters-42-05-east-1862/. Retrieved 2-3-18. April 29 at 8pm thru April 30 at 3pm . 63 http://images.library.wisc.edu/WI/EFacs/transactions/WT199101/reference/wi.wt199101.i0014.pdf. 30 http://mwlibrary.blogspot.com/search/label/devine%20family. In Wisconsin, they cleaned forests of slashings left by lumber companies, planted new trees, controlled forest fires, and helped build state parks. Koller Library. From 1909 until 1926 there were several spurs built off of Milwaukee lines in this fashion. Since 1934 the Wisconsin Logging Museum has invited visitors to step back in time to experience an age when Wisconsin Pine was filling out rivers and supplying a growing nation. 10 Gates, Paul Wallace. 1982. With the arrival of railroads to the Manitowish area in 1889 the settlement of this pocket of the Northwoods frontier mirrored the American West. I told him he was correct, and for quite a while he was silent, but at length broke out with a snort of rage. 71 http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/maps/id/18155/rec/43. 4) Prostitution was also present in logging areas, amplifying the ravages of diseases in lumber communities. In the early 1900s, across Alder Lake, on the west shore, a railroad spur line entered by the modern DNR campsite. Be sure to look at the charming, well-done murals throughout the building. Paul Brenners interview adds additional insights on the importance of steamboat operations to efficiently move logs on water lacking strong current during both phase 1 and phase 2 logging: in order to get the logs to the Rest Lake chain which was a series, I think, of ten lakes or whatever it was, they had to, there wasn't enough current that went through the lakes so they had to have booms where ever the main rivers came in to the lakes. They also began grading the earthworks on either bank and began building rock crib and timber dam tall and strong enough to hold back water fifteen feet deeper than the chain had ever seen before! (37). They could be anything. Page 164. By 1914 early court documents regarding a dispute between Manitowish Waters residents and the Chippewa & Flambeau Improvement Company regarding dam operations evidenced the dam was in terrible disrepair and needed to be fixed immediately. As a class, according to a member of the Wisconsin's First Forestry commission, the cruisers had "remarkable intelligence" and a "great stock of empirical information regarding such matters as fall with in the immediate scope of their business. You can even get your picture taken with Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox! Wisconsin railroad timeline: 19th century. Additionally, meander lines where survey lines intersected with streams or lakes were marked similarly. Manitowish Waters was swept up in the national push for aggressive 19th century logging and land speculation. Immigrant Entrepreneurship. Manitowish Waters Historical Society. The inhabitants, or the transient loggers who enable the inhabitants to live, are assorted foreigners of beast-like habits and tendencies. Explore the Turning Points in Wisconsin History Collection, [Sources: The History of Wisconsin vol 2 and 3 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin); Kasparek, Jon, Bobbie Malone and Erica Schock. Now I think they raised the water up in the fall so that once they started getting ice they could put logs right on the ice if they could get to the lakes because of the banks. Menominee men stayed in lumber camps all winter cutting timber and hauling it by sleigh to the riverbank. .P. One by one, the floating logs were hoisted 12 feet on a chain-driven track into the mill, where they slid down a chute to a deck. Logging and lumbering employed a quarter of all Wisconsinites workingin the 1890s. 24 http://mwlibrary.blogspot.com/search/label/logging. 17 Gates, Paul Wallace. Written histories of lumber camp life often focus on food, as it was a monumental task to keep well-fed a hundred or more hungry men who engaged in heavy physical labor in cold, wet weather for more than 12 hours a day. There were thousands of them registered just in this one lumber district and there were ten or twelve lumber districts in Wisconsin. The notion that the 1862 Homestead Act empowered ordinary Northwoods citizens to fairly benefit from 19th century government land policy was laughable. Some took the opportunity to bathe and shave themselves as well. Retrieved 1-26-2018. In 1892 CL&B forces built the Rest Lake dam with heavy timbers, three spillways and huge iron bullwheels to control the gates; the same year its men also built a steamboat with a backbone of tamarack and cedar ship knees hewn on the Island Lake shore. Retrieved 1-26-2018. See and touch history at Historic Sites, Museums and special events, Restore your historic home or property, get tax credits, renovation tips, Group portrait of men, women. And this is the car barns from the Turtle Lake Lumber Company(66), Interestingly, the modern Kaysen Railroad Maps for Winchester draws different conclusions regarding logging companies and rail usage south of Winchester. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973)], Sign up for the Wisconsin Historical Society Newsletter, 1996-2023 Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State Street, Madison, WI 53706. Retrieved 1-26-2018. From the 1850s until the first documented Rest Lake dam construction in 1888 timber cruisers were moving through the region on a regular basis to give feedback to land agents who served: speculators, universities, railroads, and logging companies. 2-16-2018. Wisconsin. Men who made it their trade to examine forest land for others were known as "land workers "or "timber cruisers." Immigrants were invited to the area and encouraged to try to turn acres of pine stumps into farms. Lumbermen on the Chippewa. Manitowish Waters Historical Society. Wisconsin lumber was used to construct buildings and houses for the Midwest's growing cities. Importantly, Michael Dunn has additional insights and details regarding river drives that corroborate Brenners narrative: Every few days a gate in the dam was opened and a large batch of logs was sluiced through, followed by a dose of water large enough to assure that the logs would float freely downstream but not enough to wash the logs ashore along the river's wandering course. (41) The Chippewa Lumber and Boom Company camp where the Pea Patch Saloon property is currently located was the areas most documented lumber camp. This other picture is the Boulder Lake Dam. 1900's image of Rest Lake Dam and Mississippi River Logging Co. campSource: University of Wisconsin Stevens Point archives. First, creating wagon access at Woodruff in 1888, one year later. During the earliest Vilas County logging operations, long log drives from Eagle River to Stevens Point on the Wisconsin River, were matched by longer log drives from Manitowish Waters to Eau Claire on the Flambeau/Chippewa River system. Leading and trailing the drives were wanigans or cook boats, built below the dam for each year's drive. 51. Etiquette demands that when one has knocked an enemy down he shall stamp upon him or pound him. An industry that built the city of Eau Claire, and in the 19th century supplied more lumber than anywhere else in the country. "He said to me, as I walked ahead. Then the rest of the water would be deep enough that the logs would float ever so slowly. Retrieved 2-5-18. These camps probably belonged to John E. Leahy, a lumber industrialist and political leader from Wausau. Even though the mountain rivers in the video have steeper gradients than Manitowish Waters, the rapids above Sturgeon Lake also suffered terrible logjams requiring an operating log boom during the river drive era. The companies hoped to sell their land, and local governments wanted to encourage people to remain in the regions. Retrieved 2-4-2018. Upon the dawn of the 20th century the new Progressive political movement energized Wisconsins Republican Party to take action, enacting stiffer timber trespass laws and fund active enforcement with new Department of Forestry rangers. 0. Jokingly, he referred to the lake bottoms as our Home Depot., Rice Creek BridgeProvider's name: Ticket to Buswell Facebook page URL: https://www.facebook.com/TicketToBuswell/photos/a.1635977279981942.1073741829.1635294486716888/1681200825459587/?type=3&theater. But new methods completely cleared forests of all useable trees, and even revisited areas that had already been cut over. Retrieved 2-7-2018. During phase 1 river drive logging Manitowish Waters was regionally dominant by 1888, with the creation of the Rest Lake dam serving mostly the interest of companies controlled by the Weyerhaeuser family. P 26. Page 486. Then the loggers might gather in the bunkhouse to play music or exchange stories while they repaired equipment or mended socks and mittens. Retrieved 2-11-2018. Wisconsin Historical Society. Begin or dive deeper into researching your family tree, Learn about the spaces, places, & unique story of your community, The largest North American Heritage collection after the Library of Congress. 1878 as a lumber mill . In 1903 the Milwaukee Road constructed a line between Star Lake and Boulder Junction to serve land in the Boulder Junction area owned by CL&B. 1. Starting in 1888, white pines would be driven and/or rafted by paddlewheel steam boats from upstream of Alder Lake to the Rest Lake dam, attempting to fulfill the insatiable demand of Weyerhaeusers phase 1 river drive logging operations in Chippewa Falls. 1 http://dnr.wi.gov/wnrmag/html/stories/2004/feb04/forest.htm. Owners Lisa (LaPorte) Hopkins and her husband Barry encourage visitors to use the deck or walk toward the river and witness the many pilings that remain form the logging era. Operations were carried out between July of 1900 and October 5, 1913 when the mill shut down.(62). His time spent waiting for his camera revealed more lumberjack behaviors and culture which would cause civilized citizens great pause: The village of Woodruff, Wisconsin is in the fishing season the port of entry for Trout Lake and the Manitowish muscallunge waters, and at that time it has a sort of transient life. 46 http://mwlibrary.blogspot.com/search/label/logging. Logging has been a vital part of Wisconsins history since before statehood, and the life of the lumberjack remains a vivid element of Wisconsin folklore. April 29 at 3pm thru April 30 at 7pm . Wisconsin. Manitowish Waters Historical Society. Vilas County. (11) (12) Cornell and Wisconsin Central Railroad lands stretched to Manitowish Waters. Wisconsin Logging Railroads. In our case the logs went all the way down to Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls. The Camp Five Museum is a living history museum located in Laona, Wisconsin that interprets the forest industry and transportation history of Wisconsin.It includes part or all of the Camp Five Farmstead, also known as Camp Five Logging Camp, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.