Kewaunee County & the End of the Vast Pine Forests

War of 1812 veteran Major Joseph McCormick was already living along Lake Michigan, in what would become Manitowoc County in 1836, when area Pottawatomie Indians made him aware of lands to the north. He and a party of men ventured north in 1834 to what, years later, became known as the Ahnapee River. Somehow their sailboat crossed the sand bar at the river’s mouth and the men  reported going nine miles up-river, as far as today’s Forestville where they named a small island in honor of McCormick.*

McCormick's party found the richly forested area quite favorable, and McCormick felt the north side of the river near Lake Michigan would be a fine place for a city. For whatever reason, neither McCormick nor any of the others returned within the next few years and Kewaunee County was not permanently settled until June 28, 1851 when John Hughes and William Tweedale brought their families to make a new home. Orrin Warner followed with his family a week later and thus was the beginning of today’s Algoma and the permanent settlement of Kewaunee County.

Men had been coming and going in Kewaunee County before that, however. They were lumbermen. Surveying of what became Kewaunee County began in 1830s when the flow of the river eventually known as the Kewaunee was the most prominent feature in the geographic area that would form the county. That prominent feature was to play a huge part in the county’s economic development.

Mouth of the Kewaunee River, 1836 map

Surveyor Joshua Hathaway and his friends bought large tracts of the heavily timbered land along that river and around the area that is the City of Kewaunee today. They were speculating. Hathaway sold water rights to Montgomery and Patterson of Chicago, and in 1837 Peter Johnson was hired to build a sawmill, however the mill owners failed to provide support during the winter and workers went on foot to Green Bay, narrowly escaping death, documented in Peter Johnson's letter to Hathaway dated January 12, 1838.. There was a little activity and the unfinished mill was deserted for six years when John Volk, also of Chicago, became aware of Hathaway’s search for a sawmill developer on the Kewaunee River. Volk accepted Hathaway’s offer and work began in 1843. It was the timber during the territorial days that principally motivated the land purchases along that river.

Although faced with significant problems, Volk managed to get the mill into operation. Lacking a sheltered safe harbor Lake Michigan captains feared being caught in storms. Almost worse was that the timber had to be floated downstream. Though that doesn’t sound like a big deal, a constantly shifting sandbar made it extremely difficult to get the logs into the lake. (At the time, the mouth of the Kewaunee River was east of today’s Shopko.) When ships were able to load lumber and return with supplies, Volk learned about other timberland at a place called Oconto Falls about 60 miles north of Kewaunee on the west shore of the bay of Green Bay, and he relocated He didn't stay long, however, and during a subsequent illness, he sold the Oconto Falls land and returned to Kewaunee.

Volk was joined by his brother and the two built a pier in 1850 or 1851 after earlier, in 1848, rejecting the idea. That meant people, freight, lumber and, eventually, mail and the development of Kewaunee. Volk once again left Kewaunee for Oconto Falls but that time his relocation was precipitated by Daniel and James Slauson, relative newcomers to the area.

Though Volks claimed they owned countless acres of timber in the area - and effectively drove others off - Slausons suspected Volk mills were processing lumber from stands of timber they did not own. When Slausons couldn’t find official ownership for most of the timber stands at the Menasha Land Office, Volk was challenged to present title. Since Slausons had filed for ownership themselves**, John Volk took the easiest way out and sold the mill operation. The new day around Kewaunee lasted for the next half century.

While they never came close to the operations of Weyerhauser, Knapp, Sawyer, Washburn and other Wisconsin companies existing within the same time frame, by the early 1870s, Daniel Slauson and partner George Grimmer became the county’s largest milling operation. The extent of the timber and what happened is difficult to imagine within today's framework.

In 1875 the Ahnapee Record pointed to the magnitude of logging in the camps around Kewaunee saying that within two years time the supply of pine would be exhausted. The size of the operations can be measured in the approximately 220 jobbers with an aggregate of 500 men that George Grimmer had employed for the season ending by late March 1875. The 500 men had a proportionate number of working teams. That same year C.B. Fay & Co. of Casco produced 2 million more feet of logs than the company anticipated prior to the season’s start.  James Slauson’s brother-in-law Charles Dikeman was another large mill operator, operating in Coryville by 1863. Dikeman was another who greatly exceeded  projections. The paper also said it took about 22 years to reach that point.

Lake mariner Abraham Hall was captain of the Rochester, the first boat on record visiting the lake shore settlements. Before going down on the sands of Two Rivers Point in 1847, Hall's Rochester was engaged carrying lumber from Volk's Mill at Kewaunee to Chicago.  What he did after his boat went down is not clear, however in 1849 he was working at lumbering in Kewaunee. Two years later he was also running a boarding house there, or at least was allowing the traveling public – few though they were – to stay the night.

Artist's Conception, ca. 1870

Born in 1814 in Montgomery County, New York, Hall learned the shoemaking and tannery trades from his father. By age 20 he was farming and buying and selling real estate in his home state. The Panic of 1837 suspended much of his business and in 1842 Hall came west to Racine. He purchased the schooner  Rochester in 1846 and engaged in general lake freighting. Abraham Hall could be called Kewaunee County's first permanent resident. The mill men left and Hall remained, however not in Kewaunee. On April 20, 1852, he began building a sawmill on the south branch of the Wolf River near the site of today's Algoma Hardwoods .Hall’s mercantile was built at the same time and was the first in Kewaunee County. His gristmill followed and was another county first. Hall, called a stirring businessman by Door County historian Hjalmar Holand, is credited with being the founder of Wolf River as a business center.

Kewaunee County saw a number of other large sawmills, the largest of which fits into this blogger’s family history. Just after the Civil War the Scofield Mill at Red River, with its hundreds of employees, had a capacity beyond any other in the county.  Scofield had a smaller mill about a mile south of Dyckesville on a waterfall in an area today called Rock Falls and also operated a larger shingle mill in Door County at what came to be called Tornado.

Fellows' Mill at Foscoro

Sawmills large and small dotted Kewaunee County in the early days. John McNally and his father-in-law Hugh Ritter were operating in Sandy Bay (Carlton) in the 1850s and was one of the earlier mills. Elisha Dean and John Borland were also there operating by the mid 1850s with James Sprague, Adolph Manseau and Hiram Coggswell beginning soon after. Capt. Charles Fellows had Wolf River/Ahnapee business interests but operated his sawmill at Foscoro, an area now called Stony Creek.  J.C. Merrill  and John Axtell were running their Casco mills during the Civil War. C.B. Fay had mills at Casco Pier and in Casco during and after the Civil War. Wells and Valentine ‘s mill was three miles north of Ahnapee and just after the Civil War, Boalt and Swaty were operating in what would become Bruemmerville. Henry Christman’s sawmill was in the Town Montpelier, a little over a mile north of Stangelville. Christman was the postmaster of the place called Montpelier and served from his business. Jacob Weiner began his sawmill business at Coryville just after the close of the Civil War. Joseph Horak had a sawmill at Zavis before 1876 and Alex Trudell and Charles Kalenhofer bought Slauson and Grimmer’s Scarboro mill in 1882. The Bauer Bros. began their Franklin operation about 1891, within the same time period that Albert Heidmann and Knudson were developing their sawmill at Bolt.  Pirvnec and Brandes  and the Albrecht brothers opened their mills near Stangelville. Peter Engeldinger was in Franklin before 1891 as was George Bottkol  in Bottkolville/Euren, John Buettner in Pierce and Grupp at Ellisville. William Baldwin was milling in Ellisville before 1883 and Andrew Hessel was there right after. Hardtke and Brand were also there, however little is known about them. Charles Beitling and David Hill were operating at Casco Pier at the time of the fire while Leo Heppler was at Pierce Lake (now Krohn’s) in the mid 1870s. The 1880s saw the Burmeister brothers milling in West Kewaunee.

Taylor and Cunningham's company was a factor in Kewaunee by the first editions of the Enterprize* in 1859 and Woyta Stransky was not far behind. Red River saw Speer Brothers during the Civil War and S.G. Shirland by 1872, both on the bay shore, and followed by Barrette. Interestingly, Surveyor Sylvester Sibley, Guerdon Hubbard and James A. Armstrong patented land near the mouth of Red River on September 1, 1835, intending to build a sawmill. By 1840, Wisconsin’s first newspaper publisher Gen. A.C. Ellis, Green Bay’s Daniel Whitney and Senator Timothy Howe were involved, but about 1850 Armstrong and Hubbard abandonded the mill.

There were other prominent early sawmills in Kewaunee County and at least ten that were destroyed in the horrific  fire of 1871, Edward Decker’s mill was one that was rebuilt. Willard  Lamb’s sawmill near Casco at Munchenhof was another mill that was destroyed in the fire and rebuilt. It began manufacturing in 1860 and seems to have continued until 1890. Lebfevre at Walhain does not appear to have been rebuilt.

When Hathaway began surveying in the 1830s, the trees were so thick that it was felt they'd last forever. The density is put into perspective in a story found in Ahnapee Record. Wolf River resident Edward Bacon decided to walk from the mouth of the river to his home near Hall's Mill. Using the river was the safest means of travel but for some reason Bacon was foolhardy and walked, completely missing his home. Some how he kept his wits and walked west where he knew he'd find the bay of Green Bay. When he got there, he turned south toward the place that had recently been named Green Bay. From there he walked the path leading to Kewaunee. Reaching it, he turned north and walked along the lake shore to Wolf River, finally reaching his home several days later. It is written that Bacon's family thought he was dead and was overjoyed to see him. Without a doubt, after Bacon's warm reception, he was dead meat for putting his family into such straits!

The vast stands of timber have disappeared and there are few places where somebody would get lost in the county's woods today. However it might be hard to find one's way out of  a herd of dairy cattle. Kewaunee County has close to 100,000 of them. Dairying is the leading industry and the number of cows to people is among the highest in the nation. It was lumbering and its demise and the Fire of 1871 that determined the future, which is what we know today..

*The mouth of the river now called the Ahnapee was east of the Harbor Inn. The river was dredged and straightened years later by the U.S. Engineers. A 9 mile trip is recorded but Forestville is little more than 5 miles from Algoma. The island disappeared before 1900.
**There are 5 pages of 1854 land transactions representing about 100 parcels involving Slauson.

Sources: An-An-api-sebe: Where is the River?, c. 2001; Decker Files and Fay Papers, ARC at UW-Green Bay; Here Comes the Mail, Post Offices of Kewaunee County, Kannerwurf, Sharpe, Johnson, c. 2010; Hjalmar Holand, History of Door County, c.1919; Marchant, Les & Jeanne, Marchant Relatives of Red River c. 1982;  Ruben Gold Thwaites Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin; U.S. Government Bureau of Land Management; Ahnapee Record and Kewaunee Enterprize/Enterprise; Kewaunee County maps

Volk's correspondence is a copy an original letter that was in the author's collection which has been sold.  Photos and documents are in the blogger's collection.