lumber dealer, cutover land colonizer, b. Minerva, N.Y. He moved with his arents to Wisconsin in 1856, settling in Neillsville. After 1886 he lived in Milwaukee. Gates was a pineland and log dealer in extensive areas of central and northern Wisconsin until about 1900, when his interests turned to colonization of the cutover land. In 1898 he incorporated the J. L. Gates Land Co. and served as its president (1898-1911). At one time he owned approximately 800,000 acres of cutover land, which he sold to settlers by road building, pro-motion, and colonization. Gates also maintained important financial and business interests in Neillsville, and made large investments in the Gogebic iron mines, in mining properties in the West, and in Florida timberlands. He was the author of several articles on the tariff and silver issues. E. B. Usher, Wis. (8 vols., Chicago, 1914); Natl. Cyclopaedia Amer. Biog., 11 (1901); Milwaukee Sentinel, Aug. 26, 1911.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]