Area meets criteria for sawmills

Several mills and shingle mills were built along the shore of Half Moon Lake in Eau Claire. One of the major factos in locating a sawmill was a facility to hold logs to keep them from washing downriver. Half Moon Lake was as safe a place as any along the Chippewa River.

     Timber attracted lumber interests to the area, but location of great pineries on tributaries of the Mississippi were major factors in development of the industry here.
     Main ingredients in a successful operation were presence of timber, transportation and holding areas. Some historians felt power generated from the river was also a major consideration. However, most logs were sawed by power generated from steam boilers.
     Timber was cut along the rivers first because it could easily be skidded on the ice, floated down streams in spring, sawed and rafted to market.
     Holding areas were needed so logs did not wash downstream and be lost to the mills.

Ideal locations

     Location of Eau Claire, Chippewa, Menomonie and Black River Falls on the lower end of the pineries made these sites ideal places to erect mills.
     There were billions of feet of lumber in these valleys, with as much as a million to one-and-a-half-million feet in a 40-acre tract.
     In some years as much as 130,000,000 feet of lumber would be cut from timber along the Chippewa and Red Cedar alone, not to mention the Black and St. Croix River valleys.

Attraction here

     With this background, it was little wonder the valleys attracted lumbermen. Many of these had little capital, and in a few short years their initial efforts were gobbled up by those ready to move in and eventually reap big profits. But it was not until the late 1860s and early 1870s that the real lumber barons came on the scene.
     Among the first to arrive were Duncan Grahame and Jean Brunet who made their way up the Falls at Chippewa and began cutting timber without consent from the Indians or the U. S. Government.
     The U. S. Army at Fort Crawford sent soldiers to cut lumber in the Red Cedar Valley between 1829-31. Colonel Zachary Taylor was in charge of this operation.
     In 1835, H. S. Allen who would become one of the best known among early Chippewa Falls residents, came up the Red Cedar, purchased two mills owned by James Lockwood and Joseph Rolette, and retained the agreement with the Indians. Allen paid for his investment by selling lumber at $30 per thousand feet.
     Also around the mid-1830s, others attempted to build sawmills on the Chippewa River, but failed to make it a paying venture.
     In 1838 logging was started on the Eau Galle River with forming of a company by Alexis Bailly, George Wales, and Francis Labathe.

Eaton, Carson arrive

     About the same time, Henry Eaton and William Carson came on the scene, and when they clashed with the previous group, Eaton and Carson bought out the latter men. Eaton and Carson later would be involved in Eau Claire lumbering operations.
     Other mills were built by H. S. Allen near Menomonie in 1839. He sold one mill to Steven S. McCann in 1841 and when the mill burned later, Allen took the financial loss. McCann had operated a mill and shingle mill between the Falls and Eau Claire.
     Mills along the Chippewa and Red Cedar changed hands rapidly, often every other year.
     Allen moved on to Chippewa Falls and built a mill there. Jeremiah Thomas and Arthur McCann started to operate the Blue Mills near present Lake Hallie. After McCann's death, Thomas sold the mill to Thomas E. Randall.

First Eau Claire attempt

     The first attempt to build a mill at Eau Claire came in 1845, but Allen abandoned the project and his partners, G. S. Branham and Simon and George Randall, also gave up. It was felt by some that a mill and dam downstream would interfere with Allen's operation at the Falls.
     Floods also battered some of the mills and losses were so great that new partners had to be sought to help provide capital to continue
     Eaton and Carson had bought into a mill on the Eau Claire River, but then sold out to Nelson C. Chapman, Joseph G. Thorp, Elijah Gilbert and Samuel G. Gilbert for $125,000, realizing a handsome profit.
     In the meantime, Allen was not having much success with his mill operation at the Falls. It was damaged severely by floods and in one year he lost 125,000 logs because they washed passed the dam.
     Other mills were being built north of Chippewa Falls at Chippewa City and the mouth of the Yellow River.

Along Black River

     Logging was developing on the Black River about the same time. In 1839 Andrew and Robert Wood, along with Jacob Spaulding, a millwright, and 20 others proceeded up the Black River on keelboats and by the spring of 1840 had a mill operating. Spaulding outlasted the Woods and eventually gained controlling interest in the project.
     Mormons came up the Black River in 1841 to cut timber for a Temple they were building at Nauvoo, Ill. However, they jumped Spaulding's claim and he drove them off. The following year they purchased his mills and property. In 1844, after the death of Joseph Smith, the Mormons returned the property to Spaulding and left.
     Also in 1839, three brothers, James, Henry and Alexander O'Neill, built a mill three miles below Black River Falls and operated it six years. In 1845 they relocated in Neillsville, being the first white men to enter the locality except for a few Mormons who scouted the area. James O'Neill was the first permanent settler of Neillsville and Clark County.
     Mill building high on the Black River was not profitable because of problems of floating sawed lumber down river to markets.
     Later, logs were floated down the Black River in spring and then sawed at La Crosse.
     Other early mill builders on the Black River included Leander Merrill, Benjamin Merrill and John Lane on the Black River just below the boundary of Chippewa and Winnebago land claims.

Mill near Greenwood

     John Morrison build another, and Elijah Eaton built a mill on the Black River about a mile west of what is now Greenwood.
     Still others were James Brockway and Ambrose Elliott at Black River Falls. Elliot spent many years sawing lumber in Jackson County and running logs and lumber on the river.
     Marine Lumber Co. from Marine, Ill., was one of the first to start operations on the St. Croix River. The firm hanged its name to Orange Walker Co. and operated for 50 years, sawing more than 197 million feet of lumber from 1839 to 1889.
     At one time there were 133 mills on the St. Croix, but by 1899 only 27 still were operating.
     Timber estimates in 1856 included 43 billion feet on the Chippewa and Red Cedar, 30 billion feet in the Wisconsin Valley, 25 billion feet on the St. Croix and six billion on the Black River.

--- Arnie Hoffman

Extracted from the Eau Claire Leader Telegram
Special Publication, Our Story 'The Chippewa Valley and Beyond', published 1976
Used with permission.