HISTORY OF THE CHIPPEWA VALLEY - CHAPTER 34


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Faithful Record of all Important Events, Incidents, and
Circumstances that have Transpired in the Valley of the
Chippewa from its Earliest Settlement by White People,
Indian Treaties, Organization of the Territory and State;
Also of the Counties Embracing the Valley, Senatorial,
Assembly and Congressional Districts, and a Brief
Biographical Sketch of the Most Prominent Persons in the
Settlement of the Valley. BY Thomas E. Randall 1875.  Free
Press Print.  Eau Claire, Wisconsin

CHAPTER 34

In the foregoing chapter of this work, the reader has been
made acquainted with all the principle businessmen and firms
engaged in lumber operations; and the respective localities
in this valley, together with many other individual
improvements, and development of the country generally, down
to the commencement of the war.

The recognized source of wealth and profit of all these
firms was the pine timber standing upon the lands drained by
several streams and their effluents, upon which the
establishments were located.

As each of these involve the necessity of placing piers and
obstructions in the stream, it was necessary to obtain
certain privileges, either from the legislature or under the
general charter law, in order that placing and constructing
such works might conform to legal restrictions.

Where two or more of these establishment were locate on the
same stream, as in the case of the main Chippewa, a conflict
of interests soon became apparent, and bitter jealousies
sprung up; so that in addition to the long season of
draught, quite as disastrous in holding back the supply of
logs as the destructive floods by which they were succeeded,
and the numerous other natural obstacles encountered in all
new enterprises in a new country - the opposition of rival
interests must be met and overcome at ever stage of their
advancement.

Their true interest lay in mutual concession, forbearance,
and assistance, because annual freshets were carrying away
the avails of their labor and enterprise, and furnishing to
the mills along the Mississippi not only a foretaste of the
advantages to be derived from the manufacture of our wealth
of pine into lumber, but a plausible excuse for putting in
works at Beef Slough to save and secure logs, more or less
of which went adrift every year, for want of safe reservoir
near the mills.

Under a decree from the United States District Court for the
District of Wisconsin, the vast property at the Falls,
accumulated, or rather created by the energy of H.S. Allen &
Company - proceedings in equity against the Chippewa Falls
Lumber Company having resulted in such decree - was sold at
Milwaukee by the Marshal of the District in August 1861. An
association of several of the plaintiffs bought the property
and subsequently sold it to the lessees, as heretofore
stated, Pound & Halbert, who soon made their presence and
power know not only in valley, but throughout the State and
the Northwest. The former lessee, Adin Randall, with the aid
of French & Company of West Eau Claire, erected a mill on
the lower chute of Jim's Falls, with the usual dams, piers,
booms, etc., which, with the mills on the Yellow River at
the same time owned by Mason & Sons, and that on the
O'Neil's Creek, operated by Lockhart, Manahan & Fair,
constituted the mill or manufacturing interests above the
Falls; while below were Bussy & Taylor, Gravel Island, Dole,
Ingram & Kennedy, Daniel Shaw & Company, Smith & Buffington,
McVicar Brothers, and Stephen Marston, with their
establishments of varied extent and capacity all near Half
Moon Lake, West Eau Claire. And the year following, 1862,
Sherman Brothers commenced erection of a mill at the Big
Eddy, now know the Eddy Mill. And soon after, Charles Warner
and his associates built the first mill piers, booms, etc.,
at Porterville.

The success of all lumbering operations up here depended at
all times on the development and prosperity of the great
agricultural regions to the south and west of us. Short
crops and low prices for produce were as disastrous to the
lumbermen as to the farmer. But there were other drawbacks
to both these and all other industries throughout the West,
one of which, added to expensive transportation and
inadequate markets, had retarded the settlement of the
country, and crippled its industrial and commercial
energies.

But now the war, and the necessities of the government
growing out of it, had supplied both a market and a
currency, sound, stable, uniform, and abundant, which gave
an impulse to industry and the development of Western
resources before unknown.

The passage of the Homestead law about this time also
stimulated emigration, and capitalists saw at once that the
pine lands in the Chippewa Land District, that had lain so
long subject to entry, would now be a safe and lucrative
investment, which, with the location of a large amount of
Agricultural College scrip for our own and other States,
soon absorbed vast areas of our pine land domain. From these
demonstrations, it was very evident to the owners of these
mills that the custom amongst them of exchanging logs, which
had grown out of imperative necessity, and was in some
respects very convenient, must soon be terminated; and at
all times equally apparent the storage capacity for more
logs must be provided at some point on the river for the
mutual convenience of all, or the business must prove a
failure.

Beyond all comparison to most eligible point on the rive, a
place seemingly fixed by nature for just such a reservoir,
was the great basin above the Dalles and a little north of
the village of Eau Claire.

To accomplish this it would be necessary to erect a dam
across the Chippewa River at the Dalles aforesaid, which
should set the water back and flood the low hands in the
basin, slack the current of the river, and secure storage
and conveniences for handling all the logs that would come
down in any one year.

Such a dam would also create a vast waterpower, and secure
to the locality great manufacturing. But before such work
could be established, the river being a public highway, and
its free navigation guaranteed by the treaty of cession and
constitutional provision, a charter must be obtained from
the legislature granting to the party the necessary
privileges, and guarding the rights of the public. So urgent
were the demands for such an improvement, and so great were
the benefits expected to accrue to the people of Eau Claire,
that every citizen came to regard it as of paramount local
importance; while the people of Chippewa Falls and the mill
interests above that point could view the project only as
destructive to the navigation of the river, and calculated
the build up of a rival village at the expense of the great
interests involved above.

Being in the same Assembly District until 1866, and T.C.
Pound, of the firm of Pound & Halbert, being elected to
represent the people in that body the two preceding years,
it was not deemed expedient to agitate the subject prior to
that time. But in that year, the re-organization of the
State into Assembly Districts, placed the two villages in
different Districts, and the Honorable Fayette Allen, of
Pepin County, was chosen to represent Eau Claire interests
in the ensuing session, 1867, with the Honorable J.G. Thorp,
of Eau Claire, being in the Senate for the Thirty-second
district. A stock company was organized, providing for a
capital of one hundred thousand dollars, the outlines of a
charter drawn up granting corporate powers, the right of
domain, authorizing the construction of a dam across the
Chippewa River at a designated point, with piers, booms, and
all necessary works securing and handling logs, and for
manufacturing lumber, and imposing such restrictions, and
providing for such lock, raft-slides, steamboats, logs, and
all other craft. Petitions numerously signed by the people
of the lower valley, and a strong lobby force, were sent to
Madison to assist the bill passing. The services of
Honorable J.C. Gregory, of Madison, a very able advocate,
was engaged to argue the claims and merits of the bill
before the committees and strong hopes were entertained that
it would become a law; but the opposition were vigilant and
equally untiring in their efforts to defeat it, and when put
on its final passage, it received a small majority in the
Senate, while the Assembly was decidedly opposed. Such was
the commencement of the great struggle.