The Midwest in the 1800s revolved around the logging industy.  The logging industry profited from this time because of the abundance of trees available and because of the need for lumber to build and expand.  Originally a lumbering town, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, was established in 1869, and was once home to the world’s largest sawmill.[1]  By the end of the 1800’s America saw a decline in lumbering because the resources that were once abundant were being exhausted.  Trees were no longer plentiful which meant that many lumberer jacks would be out of a job.  Cities in the Chippewa Valley were no longer considered good places for sawmill investments and the loggers were going as far as five miles or more to reach trees to be cut.[2]   The end of logging paved the way for new industry and agriculture in the midwest.  The Chippewa Valley saw this transition.  The bigger cities, such as Chippewa Falls, Eau Claire and Aleva, were influenced by industry while in the country side, the cutover went towards agriculture.  Lumbering companies in the bigger cities began to turn their attention to other sources of income.  Specifically in Chippewa Falls, railways and shoe companies became popular and many saw this new transition as the future.                                                                                           
It was at this time that a third path for Chippewa Falls was presented.  It was Thaddeus Coleman Pound (right- picture taken from "Chippewa County- Past and Present"), a long time citizen and infleuntial businessman and politician, who created this different path for the city.  Pounds dream was to transition Chippewa Falls from "Saw dust to Spa town".  In doing so, Pound envisioned to bring together two different models; one model based off the European tradition that by drinking and bathing in pure water one would be cured, and the second model based on a sanitarium which could be built to house the sick and provide different types of therapies.  Pound had two major natural resources in Chippewa Falls to build these models on.  First the pastoral “Northwoods” of Chippewa Falls gave it its recreational environment. This “northwoods” image of Wisconsin is illustrated through the famous author, Laura Ingles Wilder.  In her books, Wilder exemplifies the pastoral environment of Pepin, Wisconsin, which is only about an hour north of Chippewa Falls.[3]  In Widler’s second book, "Little House on the Prairie", she writes about her early years, which dates back to the 1870s, and she discusses her life in the Big Woods of Northern Wisconsin.   Along with the pastoral ‘northwoods’ Pound also had the natural Chippewa Spring to build his dream on.  The Spring still today stands as a landmark in Chippewa Falls because of the purity of the water.