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149 chapter seven The Full Flowering For three centuries Americans had been tapping the continent’s forests, gradually turning fixed resources into liquid assets and accumulating the capital, technological know-how, and organizational wherewithal to make lumbering one of the United States’ leading industries.1 These developments came to full flower in the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota. All that had gone before was but prelude to what unfolded on the St. Croix and Chippewa, at Cloquet and Beef Slough, along the Menominee, and in scores of places related thereto. Moreover, in large part what occurred subsequently in Oregon, Washington, and other far western locations, as well as in the nation’s capitol, reshaping forest policy and the approaches of the forest industry, was heir to what took place in the upper reaches of the Mississippi drainage. This full flowering was manifested in a sustained, extraordinarily high level of production, turned out by a host of sawmills at or near the optimum size for efficient operation; by a technology far more sophisticated than that of the pioneer period; by viable connections between woods, mills, and markets; by the accumulation of sufficient capital, much of it transferred from elsewhere, to finance these undertakings; and by a work force and leaders with the expertise to turn potential into reality. Underpinning all this was a magnificent wealth of forest resources. Yet much of what developed in the upper Lake States was a continuation of what had gone before. As on earlier frontiers, would-be farmers pushing westward were in the industry’s vanguard. They found farmland in the southern reaches of the area and, to meet their needs, imported lumber from Pittsburgh and beyond to supplement local supplies. Some settlers even brought lumber with them down the Ohio and then up the Mississippi, but with an increase in the number of small mills and ancillary manufactories located in the wooded borderlands that angled across Wisconsin and Minnesota, separating prairies from more northerly coniferous forests, the practice became unnecessary. The earliest mills drew upon deciduous stands of the transition zone and upon local farmers for logs and labor. A settler in Carver County, southwest of St. Paul, reported: The thick woods with which every claim in this region is more or less covered will in a few years yield not only the cash value of the timber, 150 The Lumberman’s Frontier but even now it [lumbering] already employs thousands of people who get out logs and stack them along the river bank; even when you don’t need the cleared land, it’s still worthwhile [for the farmer] to make about $100 in this way every winter; then after several years, the stumps are rotten and the plow is easier to handle.2 A traveler, discussing Wisconsin’s trees in 1834, made no mention of pine. Settlement—and the focus of attention—was still on land south of the pine belt, but as trees of the transition zone disappeared and the effective opposition of Native Americans declined, milling operations moved north, pine came to dominate, and the role of farmers dwindled. What emerged drew heavily upon capital, technology, expertise, and organizational forms worked out in earlier areas of operation.3 As in areas further east, the coniferous forest only rarely presented solid stands of white pine, and on sandy soils, where the timber was almost exclusively white pine, quality tended to be low. Still, it was white pine that the developing market demanded, white pine that drew lumbermen to the northern woods, white pine that determined the value of stands, and white pine alone that loggers sought until depletion forced them to turn to other species or move on. All this sounds remarkably familiar.4 Still, there were new elements to what was transpiring. A rush to tap lead deposits in what would become southwestern Wisconsin commenced about 1825. For a time the mines were more important than the area’s farms. When the rush began, Wisconsin’s population stood at a mere two hundred, but by 1829 had swelled to ten thousand, leading Congress in 1836 to peel off Wisconsin Territory from Michigan, of which it had until then been a part. By 1840 the new territory was producing half the nation’s lead, and Wisconsin’s residents had come to be known as “Badgers,” not after the animal itself, but the many miners who lived in dugouts and caves and grubbed in the earth for lead.5 With completion of the...

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