The history of the Chippewa Log & Boom Co. offers valuable regional insight into the logging industry that was the dominant industry in the Upper Midwest in the 19th century. Hundreds of men flocked to the northwoods of Wisconsin to get involved in one of our nation’s most romantic and dangerous occupations. The Chippewa River was a logging hot spot for several companies that extended from Chippewa Falls to Eau Claire. The competition for lumber and space on the Chippewa led to both interdependence and rivalry among these companies. C. L. & B. emerged after 1881, as the main logging company on the Chippewa River, and after lighting struck and burnt down their original infrastructure in 1886, they rebuilt and maintained until 1911 the biggest sawmill in the world.

Prior to 1881, the Chippewa Lumber & Boom Co. was owned and operated locally starting in 1836 by some of the most prominent men that resided in Chippewa Falls, but achieved only mild success and changed hands several times. This era of locality and instability ended in 1881 when a timber tycoon, Frederick Weyerhaeuser, and his associates from Rock Island, Illinois, purchased the company. Weyerhaeuser, like many other prominent business men of this time, seized opportunities across the country and was financially vested in a wide scope of businesses within logging and abroad.

Weyerhaeuser became president in a monumental time of tension both outside and inside of the Chippewa Log & Boom Co. The famous Beef Slough War that pitted both Chippewa and Eau Claire logging companies against each other for access to the main channel of the River, had just taken place and the workers of the company were starting to strike for shorter work days. Weyerhaeuser also faced the dilemma of how to run a profitable lumber business in the face of rapid depletion. C.L. & B’s sale of their land where lumber had been exhausted, paved the way for the transition from logging to agriculture and manufacturing in Chippewa Falls. Although the sawmill shut down in 1911, the C. L. & B. ran a profitable business until it’s dissolution in 1929.