Hayward's "lifeblood" over a hundred years ago

A MILL, A FACTORY and a farm or resort community may be the very heart and life-blood of a small town. Such an institution was the giant lumber mill that squatted beside the dam on the Namekagon in Hayward; its apron of pine logs afloat over most of the pond above the dam and its forty acres of gleaming white lumber piles reaching back to the railroad tracks at the freight depot. For forty years its cavernous sheds offered employment to the men of the city, its timechecks cash to the many satellite enterprises clustered up Main Street, and sustenance to the thirteen hundred people who lived in the village. This successful business was established through the acumen and thoughtful vision of Anthony J. Hayward, and the lively town that developed with it -- his namesack -- could also have been in his far-ranging plans.

Some time before the summer of 1880, Hayward, a timber locator working out of Chippewa Falls, began to study the feasibility of controlling the harvest of the vast stands of white pine along the upper Namekagon Valley, one of the best in the north country. His attention settled on the falls at the present damsite and on the widening of the river banks above it, an ideal situation for a dam and millpond. This pond would also provide a handy place to store logs driven down the river. He bought the land necessary to control his choice location and also the property where a small dam was being built (probably on Bradley Brook) and as much timber as his finances would allow.

Mr. Hayward did not have the capital necessary to properly develop the enormous possibilities of the strategic situation he now controlled. Around and above him on the Namekagon were untold millions of feet of pine trees. What little that had been harvested to this date had been driven down the river to the mills far below. With the railroad pushing up the valley, a way was offered to mill the lumber near the source of the timber and ship it out by rail, thus removing the risks and costs of the drive. He wanted help, and by chance he met Robert Laird McCormick, a relative and a management employee of the Laird-Norton-Weyerhaeuser lumber interests, then a Minnesota Senator. McCormick was fascinated by Hayward's concept of what could be done on the Namekagon and took him to his employers. With their financial support the North Wisconsin Lumber Company was formed November 11, 1880.

This company began at once to gain control of the timber harvest by buying land and by the development of the site. The little mill on Bradley Brook, about wher the old brick company office now stands, was completed and commenced operation August 18, 1882, producing lumber mostly for company use. In June, 1882, the company was reorganized, introducing much more capital. A large dam and mill was planned on Hawyard's site on the Namekagon and construction was in full swing by late fall. The output of the little mill was used to build boarding houses, barns, warehouses, a store and milling sheds. Later it became the planing mill and was eventually shut down because of the inadequate water supply.

The "bigmill" began sawing pine logs on June 11, 1883, with the most modern machinery available, and it was outstandingly successful from the start. It was water-powered and had two rotary saws with the necessary edgers, cut-offs, and planers to produce top quality lumber. The original daily capacity was about 200,000 board feet but this output was increased several times as better machinery was added and the power source converted to steam. In 1893 a special run was made and the mill sawed 339,313 board feet in eleven hours, a world's record for a single day's cut at that time.

The "company" managed to control the harvest of the timber above the dam, often with dubious means, and, with their control of the water flow of the Namekagon, a right given them by the Wisconsin assembly, had a practical monopoly on it. The profits of the stockholders were enormous but Hayward -- though his vision had foreseen this -- was forced out in 1886 with little gain, and moved on to where his restless and speculative spirit moved him, having little interest in routine money making. McCormick, "The Earl of the Namekagon," took over full management fo the company until the mill was sold to the Edward Hines Lumber Company in 1902, nineteen years later. As the virgin timber ran out, Weyerhaeuser interests moved on westward to the Rockies and the West Coast. Hines cleaned up what was left of the pine and converted to hardwood sawing, later selling out others.

The colossus which A. J. Hayward and the lumber barons had formed lived on, the heart -- and often the real dictator -- of the community which had sprung up around it almost overnight, to finally come to its end in ragin holocaust on a windy spring day in 1922, long after the pinestands on which it had subsisted had been whittled away. The economic life of the community had by the changed, but the city did not die with the mill; perhaps with some of the vision of its founder, it agressively moved on toward other ways to prosper.

Today there is little sign left of the mill -- only a few old pictures; and the memories of its cavernous depths, the sawfiling loft above, the constant cry of its saws, and the hoot of its noontime whistle in the minds of a few of us older residents, many of whome worked in the mill, or "ran" logs on the pond in their youth. The aging dam and the quiet millpond are still there but the memories will soon be gone. What could be more appropriate than an informational marker beside the old site with a well-designed city park along the river banks to commemorte the man and the mill that put the town here?

Reprinted with permission of the Eldon Marple estate. Photos courtesy of the Sawyer County Historical Society.