The Tomahawk River is a river in Wisconsin .
73-649: It is the largest tributary of the Wisconsin River in terms of flow. It begins at Tomahawk Lake in southern Vilas County , flows through Oneida County , and terminates at Lake Mohawksin in Tomahawk . It flows through the Willow Reservoir and Lake Nokomis (artificial reservoirs), and Kawaguesaga Lake and Minocqua Lake (natural lakes). At one time the Tomahawk River was known as
146-660: A 93-mile (150 km) stretch of the Wisconsin between its mouth and the Prairie du Sac Dam is free of any dams or barriers and is relatively free-flowing. In the late 1980s, this portion of the river was designated as a state riverway, and development alongside the river has been limited to preserve its scenic integrity. The Wisconsin River is a "navigable river of the United States." This designation primarily means that
219-399: A business-related item in newspapers around the state, in the same way that modern business pages report shipping traffic or the price of oil. The upper flushing dam was eventually developed for sawing lumber by Peter B. Champagne in 1880. He enhanced the dam, and on the east side constructed a mill race . With the sawmill came mill workers, and the need to house the workers, so eventually
292-402: A dam or rapids, they would tie the rafts to the bank and the pilot and two to eight men would try taking a rapids-piece raft through. Dams were built then with a slide for rafts - a gap about 50 feet wide leading to a ramp of logs descending to the water below. A spectator described a raft going over a dam: The moment the bow entered the slide it was literally jerked down, and disappeared beneath
365-621: A large scale" - before the Wolf and the Chippewa . The lumber industry in the Wisconsin River valley was heavily dependent on the river system until the coming of railroads in the 1870s. In winter, logging camps out in the forests felled trees, cut them into logs typically 16 feet long, and sledded them over icy trails to streambanks where they stacked them in "rollways." In spring, when melting snow raised water levels, lumberjacks rolled
438-679: A location in Oneida County, Wisconsin is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a location in Vilas County, Wisconsin is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to a river in Wisconsin is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Wisconsin River The Wisconsin River is a tributary of the Mississippi River in
511-466: A modest sized town built up that included a livery stable, boarding house, store, saloon and post office. The post office acquired the official name of Champagne and the village, never incorporated, was known variously as Champagne or Grandfather Falls. With the boarding house and other facilities, as wagon traffic increased on the road north into the woods — traffic that included loggers and other workers like surveyors, as well as commercial traffic all
584-427: A pioneering trading post and homestead near Knowlton . While traveling up stream, a party of these voyageurs encountered the rapids at Mosinee and named it Taureau , French for "bull." When they encountered the rapids at Wausau, which were bigger, they named them Gros Taureau — "Big Bull." When they encountered the much larger rapids 40 miles further up stream, they named them Taureau Grand-père. This began
657-414: A prayer and an offering to the spirit of the falls. The offering consisted of two yards of scarlet broad cloth, and a brass kettle ... [After saying the] prayer, he threw the offering overboard, and grappled his paddle, and the canoe went bounding over the billows, and ran the falls in safety. As Jenny (Merrill) developed in the 1870s, it became a point of departure for suppliers to the logging camps: [I]n
730-400: A race down a narrow, quarter-mile gorge. Lumbermen tried to reduce the hazards on the river, building timber slides over rapids and dams, dynamiting troublesome points of rock, and building wing dams to focus the current. These improvements were initially made by individual companies, along with splash dams and lumber booms, but it became clear that these investments affected everyone and
803-464: A red place" in the language of the two Miami guides who spoke to Marquette. They were probably referring to the reddish sandstone along the river, like at the Dells. The fur trade reached up the Wisconsin and its tributaries, with traders like John Baptiste Du Bay and Amable Grignon establishing posts along the river where they traded goods like knives and beads with Indians for furs. Franci LeRoi ran
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#1732772313038876-530: A trading post on the portage from the Wisconsin River to the Fox, at modern Portage. In 1828 the U.S. Army bought LeRoi's building and built Fort Winnebago at his strategic site - the army's third fort in what would become Wisconsin. To build the new fort, one of the officers from the fort led a party up the Wisconsin River, then up its tributary the Yellow to cut pine logs. In the spring of 1829 he and his men floated
949-457: A tradition for naming all the falls on the upper Wisconsin. Several hundred million years ago, the northern highlands of Wisconsin were an alpine mountain range. Beneath this range, igneous rock formed which now is called pre-Cambrian bedrock, the top layers of the mountains having been worn down by erosion. In more recent geologic time, glaciers scoured the surface exposing this pre-Cambrian rock in many areas, leaving irregular drainage throughout
1022-400: A variety of fish species. Recreational opportunities on the lower Wisconsin River range from fishing and canoeing to tubing and camping. Canoe camping is particularly popular because of the abundance of suitable sandbars along the riverway and because no permits are required. On summer weekends, naturists can be found on Mazo Beach which is north of the village of Mazomanie . According to
1095-571: Is a state-funded project designed to protect the southern portion of the Wisconsin River. It extends 93 miles (150 km) from Sauk City to the point where the Wisconsin River empties into the Mississippi, about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the city of Prairie du Chien . The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources manages protected lands of over 75,000 acres (300 km ), including the river itself, islands, and some lands adjacent to
1168-536: Is diverted through a canal and a series of penstocks to feed hydroelectric generators. Grandfather Falls dam and power generating facility is owned and operated by Wisconsin Public Service Corporation . The cascade has been known historically as Grandfather Bull Falls and as Boileaux Rapids. Other phonetic variations on Boileaux such as Beauleaux and Brearbeaux are also sometimes seen in older accounts and maps. The Ojibwe name for
1241-620: The Baraboo Hills , flows through a sand plain. Though the last ice sheet stopped around Merrill, another lobe of the ice sheet to the east reached far to the south, butting up against the east end of the Baraboo Hills. With drainage blocked, water backed up north of the hills, forming Glacial Lake Wisconsin , which reached from modern Baraboo north to Wisconsin Rapids. As the ice sheet receded, meltwater carried sand and silt ground by
1314-575: The Erie Canal , completed in 1825, revived old ideas of how the Fox River and Wisconsin River, which Marquette and Joliet and their Indian guides had traversed 150 years before, could provide a shortcut between the Mississippi valley and the Great Lakes . In 1839 some preliminary surveying was done to assess possibilities and cost. In the 1840s and 50s Congress approved land grants to finance
1387-587: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission . Access to fishing and other general use of the river and the shoreline is granted by the landowners. Warning signs and caution signs should be followed. A portion of the Wisconsin Ice Age Trail runs nearby. Camp New Wood County, situated on the site of a historic Civilian Conservation Corps camp, is located a few miles south and offers primitive camping and access to
1460-598: The Helena shot tower on the lower Wisconsin around the same time. A few years later in 1836 the Menominee ceded some of their land to the US government. Most of this land was in northeast Wisconsin, but the U.S. negotiator pressed them to also cede a six-mile-wide strip along the Wisconsin River from the future site of Nekoosa up to Big Bull Falls ( Wausau ). He pressed for this land because its pine stood within easy reach of
1533-463: The U.S. state of Wisconsin . At approximately 430 miles (692 km) long, it is the state's longest river. The river's name was first recorded in 1673 by Jacques Marquette as "Meskousing" from his Indian guides - most likely Miami for "river running through a red place." Before roads into Wisconsin, the river was canoed, hunted and fished by Indians. Loggers used the upper reaches of the river and its tributaries to drive logs to their sawmills and
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#17327723130381606-698: The forests of the North Woods Lake District in Lac Vieux Desert on the border with the Upper Peninsula of Michigan . It flows south across the glacial plain of central Wisconsin, passing through Wausau , Stevens Point , and Wisconsin Rapids . In southern Wisconsin, it encounters the terminal moraine formed during the last ice age , where it flows through the Dells of the Wisconsin River . North of Madison at Portage
1679-517: The "banked" logs into the river and log driving crews rode them downstream, breaking up log jams and retrieving those that got tangled in sloughs. In 1879 logs jammed the river near Wausau, backing up for four miles. The logging companies built special splash dams to raise water levels when the natural spring floods weren't enough. As driven logs reached the sawmills, log booms in the river were used to capture floating logs and sort them to their appropriate owners. Sawmills were more scattered along
1752-560: The Little Wisconsin River. Historically it was part of the most important north-south travel route in Wisconsin for both Indians and non-Indians (fur traders). 45°28′53″N 89°45′13″W / 45.48136°N 89.75375°W / 45.48136; -89.75375 This article about a location in Lincoln County, Wisconsin is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about
1825-474: The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, two thirds of river users can be found on the stretch between Prairie du Sac and Spring Green . Grandfather Falls Grandfather Falls is the highest waterfall on the Wisconsin River . The total drop is 89 feet, spread out in a series of cascades over about one mile. The upper third of the falls and most of the flow, except in the spring,
1898-566: The Wisconsin River Improvement Company or by any of the other dams such as the Tomahawk Dam (built in 1887), was to provide flushing water to float logs down the river in general, but specifically over the problematic Grandfather Falls. The Falls itself had three stone dams to aid in the flushing of logs as well. In the Wisconsin lumbering era, this issue was of such a concern that it made front-page news as
1971-399: The Wisconsin River in their two canoes, he wrote: The river on which we embarked is called Meskousing . It is very wide; it has a sandy bottom, which forms various shoals that rend its navigation very difficult. This is the first recorded mention of the name that evolved into "Wisconsin," which the state ended up taking. Sieur de La Salle misread Marquette's elaborate 'M' as "Ou" and wrote
2044-406: The Wisconsin River is the hardest working river in the nation. Twenty-five hydroelectric power plants operate on the upper part of the river, above Prairie du Sac. In total, these power plants use 645 feet of the river's drop to generate nearly one billion kilowatt-hours of renewable electricity a year — enough energy to power the homes of over 300,000 people - with minimal pollution. Despite this,
2117-573: The Wisconsin River. They then continued downstream 200 miles (320 km) to the Wisconsin's mouth, entering the Mississippi on June 17. Other explorers and traders would follow the same route, and for the next 150 years the Wisconsin and Fox rivers, collectively known as the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway , formed a major transportation route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. When Marquette's company entered
2190-1225: The Wisconsin are the following, working upstream from the Mississippi: the Kickapoo River , the Pine River, the Baraboo River , the Lemonweir River , the Yellow River , the Little Eau Pleine River the Big Eau Pleine River , the Eau Claire River , the Big Rib River , the Tomahawk River , and the Pelican River . The river borders Adams, Juneau, Columbia, Sauk, Dane, Iowa, Richland, Grant, and Crawford Counties. The modern Wisconsin River
2263-598: The Wisconsin as a highway through the forests, canoeing and fishing it, living along its banks and burying their dead there. At times they fought, but they also met to trade, and several tribes could share the same hunting grounds. In 1673, French missionary Jacques Marquette , French-Canadian explorer Louis Joliet , five voyageurs , and two Miami guides arrived near the headwaters of the Fox River - modern-day Portage. From there, they portaged their two canoes slightly less than two miles through marsh and oak plains to
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2336-405: The Wisconsin river until its bottom had been fully lathed and plastered." And railroads finally finished the canal scheme, criss-crossing much of the state by the 1860s and providing a means of hauling freight that ran in winter when the rivers were frozen and in summer when they were low. In the mid-1800s the northern half of the Wisconsin watershed held large stands of virgin pine forest. Far to
2409-414: The Wisconsin than other rivers because the Wisconsin presented more challenges to driving logs. That is, on other major rivers the sawmills were concentrated at Oshkosh , La Crosse , Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire , and Stillwater ; but on the Wisconsin, mills were strung out from Wisconsin Rapids up through Merrill, so that the logs wouldn't have to be driven so far. The earliest sawmills were powered by
2482-406: The Wisconsin. This was soon shut down by the army because Whitney didn't have proper permission to harvest timber from Indian lands. At that point, northern Wisconsin was still owned by several Indian nations. After obtaining better permissions, entrepreneur Whitney moved on to build the first sawmill on the Wisconsin River in 1831 or 1832 10 miles (16 km) downstream from Wisconsin Rapids, and
2555-603: The burden should be shared and coordinated. To address these concerns, the Little Bull Falls Boom Company was formed in 1852. In 1856 a larger Wisconsin River Boom Company was formed. When the rafts reached Point Basse below Wisconsin Rapids, they entered a tamer sand-bottomed part of the river. The crews joined three rapids-piece rafts side-by-side into larger rafts 48 feet wide and 100 feet long, called "Wisconsin rafts." From this point,
2628-418: The cascade was " Konajewun " which means " long falls ". Many of the falls and rapids on the Wisconsin River had the word "Bull" inserted in the name, such as Big Bull Falls at what is now Wausau and Jenny Bull Falls at what is now Merrill . These derive from voyageurs working for John Baptiste DuBay , who ran a trading post for John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company near Fort Winnebago , and built
2701-455: The current, when a sudden breeze made a raft miss a slide, or by a poorly designed slide. It was reported that forty raftsmen drowned in 1872. The most notorious rapids were Big Bull Falls (future Wausau), Conant's Rapids (Stevens Point), and Grand Rapids (future Wisconsin Rapids), but many thought Little Bull Falls (future Mosinee) was the most dangerous, with a 16-foot ledge in the river starting
2774-577: The federal government has jurisdiction for dams on the river. Dams that include hydropower facilities are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission . Courts have ruled that despite the fact that the river lies entirely in one state, it nevertheless historically carried goods to markets in other states and therefore is subject to the commerce clause of the United States Constitution . Courts have also ruled that raw logs, even if merely carried via log drives to mills within
2847-481: The flat plain. The lower, westward-flowing portion of the river, between the Baraboo Hills and the Mississippi, is probably the oldest section. Passing through the Driftless Area , it was never covered by a glacier. The western, lower end of the river is narrower than its upstream valley, leading to the suggestion that an ancestor river once flowed east through this segment. Native Americans had long used
2920-476: The glacier into the lake, where the water slowed and its sediment settled to form a fairly flat lake bed. When warming began to melt back the ice against the Baraboo Hills, about 18,000 years ago, the flowing water quickly opened the gap and poured through, carving the Wisconsin Dells and cutting the start of the river's channel through the sand plain. Subsequent erosion has further cut that channel through
2993-470: The highest energy of all the hydroelectric plants that WPSC wholly owns. (One plant that WPSC owns jointly produces 20 megawatts.) The Wisconsin River is a "navigable river of the United States," an official designation that means Congress has authority to govern its use under the commerce clause of the US Constitution . The fact that Grandfather Falls was a barrier to lumber rafts but not to logs
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3066-512: The ice, starting in January. (Rafts on other rivers like the Chippewa and St. Croix were built lighter and less flexible, since those rivers were less demanding than the rapids and dams of the upper Wisconsin.) When the ice was out and the river's water level was high enough, a fleet of twenty or forty of these 100-foot-long rafts would set out under the direction of a pilot. When they came to
3139-531: The improvement of the rivers. Work proceeded slowly, done by the government and a succession of private canal companies. In 1854, the first steamship, the Aquila came up from the Mississippi, crossed the canal at Portage, and descended the locks of the Fox to Green Bay. But the upper Fox was shallow and winding. Even less fixable was the lower Wisconsin, with its shallow, shifting sandbars. A railroad executive observed wryly that "navigation could never be secured upon
3212-439: The joints as it went over a rapids or dam - a bit like a string of roller-coaster cars 16 feet wide and 100 feet long, with heavy bumper logs across the front and back, and "spring poles" along each side to tip the front crib up a bit. A long steering oar was mounted on the front of the raft and another on the back, each 36 to 50 feet long. Then the top of the raft was loaded with lath and shingles. Sometimes these rafts were built on
3285-677: The logs down to Portage to use in building the fort. That officer was Lt. Jefferson Davis - future president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Indian territories shifted over time, but just prior to European settlement, the Ojibwe dominated the upper section above modern Wausau, the Menominee the middle section from Wausau to Portage, and the Ho-Chunk the lower section from Portage to Prairie du Chien. The economic success of
3358-481: The lower reaches to float rafts of sawn boards to markets as near as Portage and as far as St. Louis . Today dams along the river generate hydroelectric power and people fish, boat, water-ski and sight-see on the river. The Wisconsin is the longest river in the state, arising at the Michigan border in the northeast and emptying into the Mississippi River far to the southwest near Prairie du Chien. It originates in
3431-504: The lumber mills along the Wisconsin River sent their product to market was lumber rafts. Lumber rafts were used before railroads were built in the region, but to some extent even afterwards. The product was the raft itself, constructed of the boards which were to be sold at Saint Louis and other cities along the Mississippi. Special techniques and training were developed in order to optimize the amount of product that successfully made it, although due to accidents on several dangerous stretches of
3504-508: The mills and the change in the mode of transportation did not divide the journey from 'the Pineries' to 'market' into two distinct, unrelated journeys, the first of which is purely intrastate and the other interstate ..." The practical aspect of this designation generally does not have bearing on recreational use of the river, but primarily means that dams — such as the hydroelectric project at Grandfather Falls — require licensing by
3577-494: The mills were cut and "banked" along the river and its tributaries, and in the spring of the year the logs were "driven" downstream to the mills. This work was always dangerous and difficult, but nothing was more dangerous than a log jam. Once a set of logs started to clog up a river, the rest would back up behind. The largest log jam in Wisconsin history was at Grandfather Falls — 80,000,000 board feet backed up for miles. A prime goal of river development up stream, either by
3650-480: The name as "Ouisconsin." In the 1800s Americans anglicized the spelling to "Wisconsin." Antiquarians have long sought the meaning of Meskousing/Wisconsin. Indians and early French residents offered meanings ranging from "stream of a thousand isles" to "gathering of waters" to "muskrat house." In 2003 Michael McCafferty, who specializes in the Miami language, argued that Meskousing is a rendering of "river running through
3723-413: The north woods with many rapids and falls as features of the streams. Grandfather Falls lies in this pre-Cambrian rock bed, and is thus a remnant of the physical geography of this ancient mountain range. Although there are no precise records of when and to what degree trade started on the upper Wisconsin, it was known to be a significant route by around the turn of the nineteenth century. Lac du Flambeau
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#17327723130383796-431: The paper industry steadily emerged as a major economic force in the north woods. However, as a barrier to commerce Grandfather Falls ceased to become an issue. In 1938 Wisconsin Public Service Corporation commenced a major project to exploit the entire 90 foot drop for power. On the east side of the river, construction crews built a canal which diverts the water to two intake ports feeding penstocks . These penstocks carry
3869-608: The pilot led a string of rafts slowly down the winding river, trying to avoid shifting sandbars. The Dells still presented hazards, and some rafts were smashed there, but nothing like on the upper Wisconsin. Below the Dells, railroad bridges were a hazard, along with sandbars. When the rafts reached the Mississippi, they were all joined together into a huge "Mississippi raft," and proceeded downriver. Most of them went to St. Louis, where they were disassembled and sold to lumber yards. The whole trip from central Wisconsin to St. Louis took from three weeks to all summer, depending on how much water
3942-513: The portage road was well-established. A story extant from the period describes what was probably the first and only canoe trip down the falls: In 1849, these falls were navigated, in a bark canoe, for the first and last time by two Indians — the Black Nail and the Crow. At the head of the falls before starting, Crow held the canoe by a rock projecting from the shore, while Black Nail made
4015-507: The river didn't flow. Nevertheless, rafting remained cheaper transport than railroads, and continued for some years. The last lumber rafts went down the Wisconsin River in 1888, from the sawmill at Biron , heading for St. Louis. Later, in the first half of the 20th century, more dams were constructed to provide for flood control and hydroelectricity . The dams also spurred tourism, creating reservoirs such as Lake Wisconsin that are popular areas for recreational boating and fishing. Today,
4088-407: The river some times these lumber rafts were smashed into splinters — and many times the workers running the rafts were killed. It was virtually impossible to run these lumber rafts down Grandfather Falls. As a consequence, Jenny (Merrill) became the northernmost sawmill town. The Falls acted as a hazard to log drives as well. Prior to railroads penetrating the pineries in the 1880s, logs for
4161-485: The river turns to the west, flowing through Wisconsin's hilly Western Upland and joining the Mississippi approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Prairie du Chien . Before the Grandfather Falls dam was built in Lincoln County , that series of rapids constituted the largest drop in a short distance on the river. Over the course of a mile and a half, the river dropped 89.5 feet. Major tributaries of
4234-411: The river via waterwheels and turbines at dams. After being sawed, most of the lumber was rafted to markets down the river. For example, after a Wausau sawmill sawed a 16-foot log into 16-foot boards, the boards were bound into 16 by 16-foot "cribs" twelve to twenty inches deep - floating packets of boards. Six or seven of these cribs were connected into a long, narrow "rapids piece", which could flex at
4307-406: The river, and the river flowed toward parts of Wisconsin (and beyond) that needed lumber. Once the treaty was signed, lumbermen rushed in looking for good mill sites. They found many, because the river had plenty of fall over the hard bedrock in this section. By 1839, all the sites were taken as far north as Big Bull Falls. Of the state's river drainages, the Wisconsin was the first "to be exploited on
4380-489: The river. In 2020 the riverway was designated as a protected Ramsar site . There are no dams or man-made obstructions to the natural flow of water between the hydroelectric dam just north of Sauk City and the confluence of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi. This long stretch of free-flowing river provides important natural habitats for a variety of wildlife, including white-tail deer , North American river otters , beavers , turtles , sandhill cranes , eagles , hawks , and
4453-478: The south on the savannas of southern Wisconsin and the treeless prairies of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, settlers needed lumber to build their barns and houses. In that era before trucks or even roads, the Wisconsin River offered a way to move lumber from the forests to markets downstream - an efficient way! In 1827-28 Daniel Whitney started a shingle-making operation near where the Yellow River flowed into
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#17327723130384526-547: The state, constitute commerce. On the basis of these judgments, the Wisconsin River is considered a navigable waterway throughout its entire length. This designation does not generally have bearing on recreational use of the river. Boat registrations and fishing licenses are obtained through the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources , for example. The Lower Wisconsin River State Riverway
4599-402: The summer months canoes were the common means of conveyance. From 1,000 to 1,200 pounds could be loaded on a canoe and the trip from Jenny to Grandfather made in a day, and as many as 25 or 30 canoes were often seen on the water, each with three men bound for Grandfather. It required four days to make the trip to Eagle River by this means and two to return downstream. The principal means by which
4672-428: The towns upstream could now ship finished lumber directly to market by rail. Thus Tomahawk and Rhinelander began to boom, and the sawmills from Merrill south began a steady decline. Even to the extent that the downstream mills stayed economically viable, log drives disappeared. Instead logs themselves could now be brought by rail to the mills. The decline in sawmills did not mean a decline in the forest products economy, as
4745-415: The valley, eventually cutting a course similar to the modern river. The next segment, from Merrill to around Wisconsin Rapids, was probably formed as earlier glaciers retreated, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Like the northern segment, the bedrock beneath is pre-Cambrian igneous and metamorphic rock - hard-to-erode stuff that produces frequent rapids. The next segment, from Wisconsin Rapids to
4818-448: The water about 1/3 mile horizontally and 92 feet vertically. At the bottom, a power plant converts the water into about 17 megawatts of electrical power using two generators. A key component of the system are two surge towers which rise above the plant. These dampen the flow and allow maximum energy from the gravitational force of the water to drive the generator wheels, thus optimizing overall efficiency. The Grandfather Falls system produces
4891-525: The way to Ontonagon — the village became a stopping point for travelers to refresh themselves and feed and water their horses. Once the railroads penetrated the north woods — the Milwaukee Road , a few miles east; the Soo Line , going east–west a few miles north; and rival north–south railroads just 25 miles or so to the east and west — the general situation change drastically as
4964-451: The wild waters. [Pilot Jack Hawn's] men were lifted off their feet, thrown back upon the raft. Hawn for a moment was overboard, but was caught and pulled aboard - all came out right, the men thoroughly soaked, yet saved the raft. Later in the same day Hawn and Jas. Mowe saved by their daring and skillful handling of a skiff the life of a poor fellow clinging to one of the new piers. Many rafts were wrecked and men drowned when someone misjudged
5037-508: Was a large Ojibwe town within which Montreal fur traders built semi-permanent trading posts, including by more than one company simultaneously. These traders sent employees on excursions down river to trade with Ojibwe towns and camps which existed as far south as the Yellow River . When traveling to the satellite Ojibwe villages downstream, it was necessary to portage the Falls. By the time US federal surveyors arrived to take their data in 1851,
5110-422: Was an essential fact in a key case which determined its navigability. The plaintiffs in the case argued that since logs were driven from above the Falls to mills between Wisconsin Rapids and Merrill, for that section of the river the commerce was intrastate only, and not interstate. The court considered this fact, but ruled against this argument. Citing precedent, the court said, "The sawing of the logs into lumber at
5183-472: Was flowing and the skill of the raftsmen. The lumber output of the Wisconsin River valley grew from 6.25 million board feet in 1840 to 19.5 million board feet in 1847 to about 100 million board feet in 1854 to about 200 million board feet per year around 1872. This was a huge output, but other river valleys in Wisconsin produced huge amounts too. Around 1871 the Wisconsin side of the Menominee River
5256-489: Was formed in several stages. Most recent was the northernmost segment of the river, from the source to around modern Merrill . During the last ice age an ice sheet crept down from Canada, and a section called the Wisconsin Valley Lobe bulged down the valley that would become the Wisconsin River to near Merrill . As the climate warmed and that ice sheet receded about 14,000 years ago, meltwater drained down
5329-651: Was said to produce about 300 million board feet, the Wolf River valley about 180 million board feet, the Black River valley 300 million board feet, the Chippewa River valley over 400 million feet, and the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix over 100 million board feet. With the railroad boom of the 1870s came an alternate means of transporting lumber which didn't depend on spring floods, and went direct to places that
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