The End of the Fur Trade

In the United States history of expansion and settlement its citizens left their homes in search of new financial opportunities and occupations. Wisconsin has a long history of rich natural resources and wildlife that have led people to the state for centuries. These characteristics hold especially true in Chippewa Falls and the rest of North West Wisconsin. The quest for furs brought the first white men to the Chippewa Valley, but it was the numerous pine trees that attracted the masses that came rushing in at the middle of the 19th century. As the fur trade began to fade away in the early 1800s, people in the Chippewa Valley had to find other ways to make a living. The most logical outlet lay within the vast pine supply that covered North Western Wisconsin. Like any frontier in the U.S. at this time though, the Native Americans inhabited the rugged land and threats of attack remained ominous. The Chippewa Valley’s land was mostly owned by the Chippewa, Sioux, and Winnebago Indians, and no one before 1818 would try to extract any pine.1

The First Sawmills

But in 1819, a Col. John Shaw made an attempt to establish a sawmill at Black River Falls. Shaw had barely got the sawmill going when Winnebago Indians came to him in a starving condition and he gave them all of the supplies he had, thus ending his business.2

The first attempt to build a mill in the Chippewa Valley came in 1822 and is credited to a man from Kentucky named Hardin Perkins. Perkins started a mill on Wilson Creek, which is located in modern day Menomonee. He had nearly completed his mill and was about ready to saw logs when a flash flood washed out his dam and sawmill. These first two sawmills were a good indication of the instability that would follow logging through out its history.3