A Moment in Time: Logging Boom and the Birthplace of Minnesota
By Jeffrey S. Williams
Mankato Times
Northern Minnesota is a beautiful place. The region is home to numerous state and federal forests featuring majestic oaks, thick stands of aspen and the ever colorful maple trees. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area and surrounding resorts feature camping, fishing and canoeing opportunities in pristine wilderness. Most of the lakes are hidden gems stocked with sturgeon, muskellunge, trout, walleye, perch, bass and numerous other varieties of freshwater pan fish. They are quite large and the clear water they swim in makes for a healthy eating catch. The volcanic nature of the basaltic northern Minnesota land provides an abundance of rich minerals including some of the highest-grade iron ore in the world.
In the midst of this beauty lies the source of the Mississippi River. The “Mighty Mississippi” isn’t too powerful when she begins her journey south. Beginning at Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, the river has long been known for its majestic beauty, awesome power, fertile lands and rich history. A little stream flows through the woods from Lake Itasca in Clearwater County and draws in tributaries from several lakes, creeks and streams. Now a sparkling clear river, it widens as it moves east and south to Cass Lake and Lake Winnibigoshish, reservoirs on the Leech Lake Ojibwe Indian reservation. It winds through Grand Rapids, the childhood home of actress Judy Garland, and it then starts the familiar crookedness by which it is recognized. When the water reaches Saint Paul, 150 miles downstream, it merges with the Minnesota River near Fort Snelling, joins with the Saint Croix River at Prescott, Wisconsin, and deposits it’s now muddy waters into in the Gulf of Mexico over two thousand miles away.
When Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, the first European to reach the Mississippi River, arrived on May 8, 1541, he called it a great river and named it the “Rio Grande.” The native Indians called it the “Chacagua.” Over a century had passed since de Soto’s visit before French explorers Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette explored the upper part of the river.
In 1673, with help of Indian guides, Marquette officially named it “Mississippi,” or “Great River” as it was commonly referred by the local Indians. Nine years later, French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, claimed the entire river valley for France and named it La Louisiane, for King Louis XIV. He renamed the river “Colbert,” though the French name never caught on.
By the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, most of the river valley had been ceded to Britain, and was transferred to the United States after the American Revolution. Article Eight of the 1783 Treaty of Paris states, “The navigation of the river Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, shall forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States.”
The United States government bought the remaining North American land from France through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and First Lieutenant Zebulon Pike was sent on his Northwest Expedition to find the source of the river in 1805. On February 1, 1806, Pike arrived at Lang Sang Sue, or “Leech Lake,” which a young Indian previously told him was the source of the Mississippi River.
At the suggestion of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the Indian Agent at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan Territory, an expedition was made to visit the Ojibwe west of Lake Superior and for further exploration. In 1832, Schoolcraft, along with Reverend William Thurston Boutwell of the Presbyterian Indian Mission at Mackinaw, Michigan Territory, and twenty others made their trek through the section of the Territory that later became Minnesota. During the expedition, they discovered the true source of the Mississippi River and named it Lake Itasca. Schoolcraft asked Boutwell for the Latin words for “truth” and “head,” to which Boutwell replied, “veritas” and “caput.” Schoolcraft dropped the first three letters from veritas, and kept the first two from caput, and created the name, “Itasca.”
Henry Dodge, Wisconsin Territorial Governor, came to terms with forty-seven tribal chiefs and warriors representing twelve bands of the Objibwe Indians. A treaty was signed in what is now Mendota, Minnesota on July 29, 1837 which ceded millions of acres to the Federal government in exchange for payments of $35,000 per year for twenty years, a yearly ration of $500 worth of tobacco, and coverage of debts to traders. The treaty lands encompass an area stretching from Walker and Brainerd, Minnesota to the west; Solon Springs, Wisconsin to the north; Crandon, Wisconsin to the east; and Wisconsin Rapids to the south. The area includes Mille Lacs Lake, parts of the Mississippi River, and most of the St. Croix River. A similar treaty was signed with the Dakota Indians two months later. The land acquisition was not for settlement, but to make the vast timber stands available for harvest.
A year later, on September 29, 1838, the steamboat Ariel arrived at Fort Snelling, which included passengers David Hone and Lewis Judd. These Illinois entrepreneurs were set out from Marine Settlement, Illinois, to explore the newly acquired St. Croix River lands to choose a site for a potential lumber mill. The site they selected is between the modern day towns of Stillwater and Taylor’s Falls and was originally called Judd’s Mills. It was renamed to Marine Mills in 1853 and eventually to Marine-on-St. Croix in 1917. The first sawmill on the St. Croix River, which was operated by the Marine Lumber Company, began operations on August 24, 1939.
The mill was quite primitive at the time. A stream of water over a wheel powered the old “muley saw,” which was capable of sawing five thousand feet per day, a slow pace compared to circular-type mills which would come later.
However, Hone and Judd were not the first to scout potential mill sites on the river, nor were they the first to harvest timber in the region.
John Boyce arrived at the confluence of the Snake and St. Croix Rivers in late 1837 after the treaties were signed and began a limited timber harvest utilizing six mules to move the logs. However, with the inability to get his products to market during the winter, and having had difficulties with Indians who were not yet paid due to the treaty provisions, Boyce was forced to shut down his operation before it really got underway.
Around the same time that Boyce began his operations and a year before Hone and Judd arrived, Franklin Steele and several business partners traveled through the region on a canoe and scow loaded with equipment and began staking claims to suitable lumber mill sites. They invested $20,000 into the venture, named the St. Croix Falls Lumber Company, but were unable to get their mill operational until after Judd’s Mills.
The St. Croix Falls Lumber Company created a boom works south of the falls. The boom works was comprised of a complex series of piers, pilings and floating log fences that created log channels, navigation channels, sorting gaps and holding pens, needed to organize and move the timber that floated down the river. The loggers utilized the river’s high-water spring current to move their winter cut from forest to market.
During the Spring flooding in 1843, the St. Croix Falls Lumber Company boom gave way, floating the company’s entire inventory down the river, leaving it with no lumber to cut.
However, John McKusick, a logger who arrived from Maine in 1840, was placed in charge of the logs for possible harvest. McKusick was able to make four rafts with a half-million feet of logs each and put two of the rafts under the charge of Stephen B. Hanks. The four rafts were then floated down the river to St. Louis, where they were sold to two companies – West & Vandeventer along with W.G. Clark & Child. They were the first four rafts of what would later become a huge trade down the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers.
McKusick took his portion of the proceeds and, with three others, invested in a lumber mill after buying out claims from Jacob Fisher in October 1843, who had claimed unsurveyed lands at the head of Lake St. Croix. After purchasing equipment from St. Louis, the mill was operational on April 1, 1844, the third such mill on the St. Croix River.
It was John McKusick who gave the area its present name, Stillwater, after having pleasant memories of Stillwater, Maine, near where he grew up.
Soon after, more lumber mills were built on the river. Osceola in 1845; Arcola Mills in 1846; Hudson in 1850; Lakeland and Afton in 1854; Prescott in 1856 along with additional mills in Stillwater built in 1850, 1854 and 1856.
When the State of Wisconsin was created in May 1848, it left ceded lands west of the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers without a government. It was because of this that Joseph R. Brown, one of the earliest settlers in the St. Croix River valley, organized a meeting at John McKusick’s general store on August 26, 1848 to call for the creation of a Minnesota Territory. Known as the “Stillwater Convention,” the delegation selected Henry Sibley to deliver the proposal to Congress.
Congress passed the Organic Act of Minnesota on March 3, 1849 which formally created the territory. President James K. Polk signed the bill that night, but as it was his last night in office, refused to name a territorial governor. Instead, the outgoing Democrat left the appointment up to his Whig successor, President Zachary Taylor, who took office the next day. Taylor, a former Commandant of Fort Snelling, chose former Pennsylvania Congressman Alexander Ramsey for the position. Because of the Stillwater Convention, the city is known as the “Birthplace of Minnesota.”
The Territorial Legislature organized the St. Croix Boom Company on February 8, 1851, and it was originally located near Taylor’s Falls. This legislation gave them the right to collect all logs at a certain point on the river, sort them according to mark, and deliver them to the appropriate owners in return for forty cents per thousand board feet. Considering that lumber men from Stillwater, Marine and Osceola comprised the leadership of the company, Taylor’s Falls seemed like a logical choice.
However, the second largest tributary with logging operations was the Apple River, and the boom was located north of that junction. Consequently, by 1856 when the boom company was in financial straits, a syndicate of Stillwater lumber barons led by Isaac Staples, bought the company and relocated the boom two miles north of Stillwater which allowed logs from the Apple River to enter into the system.
This gave Stillwater more clout over the surrounding areas. The river system provided easy access to the northern Minnesota and Wisconsin timber stands. The water was relatively calm, which enabled easier raft construction and power generation. Stage roads connected the city to St. Paul, Marine and Point Douglas, and with the high volume of logs choking off river transportation north at the boom, Stillwater became the northern terminous of the riverboat trade.
A group of local men, most of whom were employees of the St. Croix Boom Company, gathered at the boom site on March 8, 1858 to discuss ways to protect their property from the Indian raids that were occurring in the area. The result of that meeting was the formation of the Stillwater Light Guard, a local militia organization.
Taking their duties seriously, members of the Guard immersed themselves in rifle drill. Their hard work paid off as they became a cohesive unit and earned a good reputation in the community, though, its captain, Carlisle Bromley, was cited in the Stillwater Democrat for not taking the welfare of his troops into consideration during drills and parades. The newspaper went so far as to suggest that his name be stricken from the membership rolls for chronic tardiness and his reputation for turning the Guard into a drinking club, though the newspaper’s editors had no ill-will towards any other member.
In August 1859, when Minnesota Governor Henry Hastings Sibley called on the state militia to quell an uprising in Wright County, northwest of Minneapolis, the Stillwater Guard assisted in the capture of twenty-three people involved in a lynching. They were also tasked with dispersing a crowd attempting to commandeer a riverboat. Using a bayonet charge, the Guard peacefully disbanded the drunken crowd, allowing the vessel to continue its voyage.
The following year they competed in a drill competition at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds against the remaining militia companies. The Stillwater Guard won the contest and was considered to be the state’s best-drilled militia.
In early 1861, the state militia system reneged on its promise to provide financial support to each company, forcing several companies to disband. The Guard members took it upon themselves to raise the funds needed to continue. They held bi-monthly parties and set a $1 admission charge for each attendee. The parties were successful, secured the finances needed to continue operations and helped forge a strong bond with the community. The March 19, 1861 Stillwater Democrat discussed the fiscal health of the unit: “The Stillwater Guard still lives…and there is still enough vitality about it to retain and sustain its position as the best drilled company in Minnesota or northwestern Wisconsin. The company has thus far maintained itself at an expense of $5,000 without state aid and without the aid of wealthy and generous citizens…the Stillwater Guard will never fail to meet their engagements.”
When the war began, they mustered in as Company B of the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry at Fort Snelling on April 29, 1861, wearing their utility uniforms of red wool shirts and black wool trousers. The First Minnesota suffered casualties at First Bull Run, the Peninsula campaign, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Bristow Station and at Gettysburg, where twenty-nine members of Company B were killed or wounded during the regiment’s famed charge on July 2, 1863.
When the St. Croix Boom Company closed on June 12, 1914, over 15.5 billion feet of logs had passed through. It became a national historic landmark in 1966 and was re-dedicated with a new sign denoting its importance to the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway on Aug. 25, 2016.