Logging the township - the great white pines

By KATE ZDROIK

Rosholt Record
When Wisconsin became a state in 1848 the Town of Alban, known then as Town 25 North, was heavily forested. As an incentive to promote settlement of the land, the U.S. government granted every other section of land that was within 10 miles of a railroad track to railroad companies. Additionally some navigation companies received land near rivers in order to develop travel routes within the state. The improvement companies and railroads often sold the logging rights to lumber companies, known as jobbers, who logged off the cream of the lumber, then the land was often sold to smaller logging firms who further logged the land and sold it to early settlers. In 1866 the tax rolls showed that the Fox and Wisconsin Improvement Company owned more than one-third of the land in Town 25 North. The job of the Fox and Wisconsin Company was to build a canal that would ultimately connect Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. For this work the government gave them land along the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers and their tributaries. In 1866, the company had legal struggles which split it into two branches - the Wisconsin and the Fox. Some land was sold off while other sections remained under the ownership of the company and was known on tax rolls as F. R. Lands (abbreviation for Fox River Land). The first white settlers arrived in Town 25 North around 1857. The land was still heavily forested since it was isolated from railroads and major waterways or rivers. Those who came as homesteaders had five years to cultivate, or prove up, the land and prove that he or she resided on the land. At the end of those five years they would receive the title to the land. Because the land was heavily forested the first job of the early settlers was to clear the lumber off the land. This provided logs for the first homes and barns while allowing for a little income from selling the lumber to local saw mills.

The cleared land was then able to be tilled. Once these early settlers cleared enough land for their own use they often spent winters working for the larger lumber companies logging off company owned lands. Lumber Companies One of the major logging companies that worked in Town 25 North was the Conlee Lumber Company of Oshkosh. Between 1880 and 1900 Conlee Lumber Company operated extensively in the eastern and northern portions of the township. The company set up camps near the Little Wolf River at the current location of Wigwam Inn and west of Norske near the Little Wolf River. Later they took over a camp owned by the Ripley Lumber Company at Lake Helen, then known as Huntington Lake. Ripley is thought to be the first big lumber company to set up operations in Town 25 North. Other large jobbers of the time were Hatton Lumber Company, Moore & Galloway and Brooks & Ross. Some of the smaller jobbers were John O. Wrolstad, Maxwell Lumber Company and J.G. Rosholt. Local early sawmills Between approximately 1866 and 1900 there were seven sawmills around the township. Three mills were along the South Branch of the Little Wolf River, now known as Flume Creek. The Stenerson Mill was located northwest of Northland along the Little Wolf in section 35. The Johnson Mill was further west in section 34 and the Bigler Mill was further north and west in section 33. Peter Eiden built a mill in the northwest corner of the township along the Little Wolf River in section 7. J.G. Rosholt relocated a mill from Graham Lake near Iola to the pond built by Jens Rasmussen inside the current village limits. Leklem and Danielson ran a mill west of Three Lakes for two years (1896-1898) then moved it east of Gutho Corner. Later they moved the mill to Holt, west of Galloway. Virgin timber Logs in the late 1800s and early 1900s came from virgin timber which often measured over 100 feet tall.

Ole P. Dobbe recalled, in 1947, that a tree once stood on his father, Per Dobbes, land which measured six feet eight inches in diameter at a height of about three feet off the ground. In the early days of logging Town 25, seven foot saws were often employed to cut the behemoth trees. The saws needed to be long enough to clear the saw dust out of the cut before passing back through the tree. Even the seven foot saws were not long enough to complete the job of felling some trees. It was estimated that fortys averaged one million feet of timber in Town 25. A few fortys were said to have had as many as three to four million feet. Once the massive trees were brought down, the branches were removed and the trunks were cut into manageable lengths so the logs could be moved to mills for further processing. In the next issue of the Rosholt Record, I will write about the techniques, tools and people who completed the arduous task of moving the logs to mills.