News of the big mills sawing lumber during the days when the virgin white pine was being harvested was often the subject matter for the newspaper writers of the day. They expounded in great detail about the "champion" daily and annual cuts of prime lumber; the size and kind of saws used in the mill, the power source, and the methods of piling for drying. They also told in heroic measures of men at the head of the corporations who owned these mills and of the ability and cleverness of the superintendents in charge of the operation. Historians, perforce, followed this lead--what was news then was later history. Few of either kind of writer chronicled the activities of the small mills producing lumber at the same time or tell of their importance in the harvest.

Often termed "scavenger" mills in later days because they picked up what the big boys had wasted and left behind, they were the opportunists of their day. Moving easily because of their small size and the simplicity of their organization, no pocket of timber was to mean for them to set up their portable machines and saw it out. They worked for the small logger or for the new settlers who had accumulated a few logs in land-clearing operations and needed lumber to errect their houses and farm buildings. Though most common after the big mills had ceased their major operations, many competed at the same time for the local market.

The first recorded instance of a sawmill in what is now Wisconsin was the one built by Daniel Shaw in 1819 at the first falls of the Black River. The Indians, still in possesion of their land, objected to this incursion by whites and Shaw was forced to leave in haste before they burned out his works. However, he returned later and eventually operated the big mills of the Daniel Shaw Lumber Company on the Chippewa. Most of the prominent lumbermen of our area in the late 1800's -- Orrinin Ingram, A. J. Hayward, Frank Drummond, and Knapp, Stout's Company's William Wilson and Andrew Tainter -- started out with small mills, later to prosper and incorporate to form the big combines.

The first lumber used in Wisconsin was probably cut in a method more rudimentary than the portable mills, the ancient "over-under" or "Armstrong" works. A log was placed on a platform or over a pit (called pit-sawing) and one or two men at each end of a long saw operated it in an almost vertical position, slicing the log into planks and boards. Obviously more portable than the smallest mill (they were not called mills because their was not turning or circular motion, only up and down strokes), this method was used mostly on emergency jobs. The late Joe Trepania once told me that in the early days of the Reservation the Indian Service sawed lumber in such a pit-saw operation located where the old Reserve-Post road crossed Blueberry Creek, using several saws and a large crew to cut lumber for houses to replace the teepees, then common habitations. Emil Radloff of Cable tells of a similar operation on the Namekagon in 1909 when four of his brothers manned a saw there to cut lumber for their house and barn and new water-powered mill.

The portable mill was essentially a circular saw on an arbor (a shaft on two bearing with the saw on one end and a drive-pulley on the other), a carriage to hold the log in position and carry it forward into the saw and return, and a source of power to apply to the arbor pulley.

Before the advent of the steam engine the motive force was water power (Hayward's little sawmill on the dam across Bradley Brook on Florida Avenue was fueled by water), or a turnstile powered by several horses. When tractor-type steam engines became available they not only powered the mill but pulled it from one setting to another. I can remember my delight as a boy of ten (in 1915) when I was allowed to stoke the fire with slabs on such an engine which was running the mill sawing our logs at the north end of Round Lake School Road. More modern engines soon took over but in memory none will replace the chuffing steamer.

The lumber sawed by the mills was generally rough and not evenly dimensioned, due mostly to the limitations of the machinery used. The large circular saw had an inherent whip when fumed at high speed and if its thickness was increased to control this vibration, the kerf it cut was so wide that it wasted up to one-fourth on the lumber. In the big permanent mills, thin bandsaws were used to alleviate this waste. Some of the portables had a planing mill and the lumber they cut could be run through this machine, producing dimensioned lumber of fair uniformity.

After the better pine was gone and the mills of the big operators closed down, the scavenging portables had their day, setting up wherever they could get logs enough for intermittent sawing. One of these relics is still being operated by Pete and Bill Peterson on the Hayward Pond off Hwy 77. There father, Charles Peterson, bought it in 1918 and they were often his crew as youths. Now at age 82 and 78, respectively, then saw out a few logs occasionally "just to keep their hands in!" Bill rolls the log onto the carriage and sets the "dogs" to hold it in place while he "feeds" it to the saw by moving the lever controlling the forward-and-back motion of the carriage on its rails. Pete sorts and loads the lumber on the truck and stacks the slabs. They have a smooth two-man operation; the usual crew would be four or five men. However, the set-up is not totally authentic--power is being furnished by a diesel tractor engine instead of a shiny black steam engine puffing smoke from its stack as it labors to keep the saw up to speed through the cut!

While the enormous mills of the great pineries operators of the time were producing most of the prodigious volume of lumber then being sawed, and at the same time the portables were picking up the crumbs, an intermediate type of mill managed to survive, even to this day. Then powered by a stationary steam engine (or by the engine on a steam tractor) and fired by waste slab wood, they had an efficient saw and shaft system with cut-off saws to square the end of the boards at the right length. A planing mill was usually part of the setup to produce dimensioned lumber of good quality after it had been piled and dried out. Often they were operated at the same location for several years, hauling their product into a shipping point by lumber wagons and a four-horse team to market it as best they could.

The first record I have locally of this type of mill was an item in The North Wisconsin News early in 1884 that a "boiler" was being hauled out to William Wettenhall's new sawmill on Round Lake. He lived on Peninsula Road at its bend to the northward, so it would seem reasonable that his mill was here. However since later mills were located on the west side of Little Round Lake, his may have been there. The paper reported that he began sawing on April 26, 1884 (all sawing was done during moderate weather or from a "hot-pond" because frozen wood was much more difficult to cut) and that the mill was producing 23,000 board feet of lumber daily.

Two years later F. M. Steves of Rice Lake "set up a mill on Round Lake" (Little Round). In 1892 William F. Steves sold his mill there to R. D. union "who will log and mill."

On May 16, 1890, the paper mentions the "mill on Round Lake and there are many logs in the lake." Apparently much of the timber on its shores was cut and moved to the mill by water. At the north end of Big Round is a logging road leading directly into the water, indicating the hauling ws done on the ice or the logs were dumped on the ice and later floated to the "bull-chain" carrying them up to the mill.

Art White was on the corner of Peninsula and Rould Lake School Roads. He tried milling, logging, horse trading and racing and was a pioneer farmer and resorter. On May 5, 1900, The Hayward Republican reported that his "mill and a half-dozen buildings were burned." This location was probably in the field behind the house of William Wettenhall--when I was a boy there was an enormous sawdust pile there. White had a lumber camp behind his house--two bunkhouses and a cook shanty. He also had a mill set-up on Hamblin's pond beside Peninsula Road.

Mortiboy Brothers had a "mill fifteen miles west of town (Hayward)" in February of 1892 but it was destroyed by the devastating fires in August of 1898. Apparently the machinery was not damaged since the paper reported on June 2, 1900, that "Mortiboy has sawed the largest amount in years." The mill was located near the John P. Joseph farm at Saunders Lake.

The year of 1900 saw a proliferation of these moderate sized mills. Hayward Hardwood Lumber Company put in "an extensive plant with a good appearance" on the northeast end of Smith Lake, employing 75 men. The Soderburgs had a good mill at Phipps. W. A. Cooper planned a mill at Cooper (Doran's Crossing). Lee Brothers had one on the Reservation, Gaynor Brothers had a set-up on Whitefish Lake, and the Radisson Lumber Company had "the best sawmill at the railroad bridge across the Chippewa."

The next year also saw new mills: R. M. and John Lee put in a mill two miles west of Mason; Rogan Brothers, one on Big Brook near Cable; and Edes Brothers put in a mill behind O'Brien's old camp "near Round Lake."

The largest mills did not close when the bulk of the big pine had been harvested (it was mostly gone by the period 1900 to 1905), but kept on sawing on reduced schedules. They continued to saw pine by importing it from other areas by rail and by using timber of lower grade, thus competing directly with the scavenger mills. They also augmented their supply by converting more lines to the sawing of hardwood which they received over new railroads into these forests. The Hayward mill built by the North Wisconsin Lumber & Mfg. Co., an Edward Hines subsidiary, in 1902. It burned in 1922.

The smaller mills increased in number as the settlers came. Some of the later mills were Currier's near T Lake School, Preston's at Spider Lake, several at Radisson, Couderay, Seeley and Hayward, and the ones still operating locally; Radloff and Vortanz at Seeley, and Doehr at Grindstone Lake.

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