Turning Points
in Wisconsin History
Logging and Forest Products
The 19th-century logging industry reshaped the landscape of central and northern Wisconsin, provided a livelihood for thousands of workers, and formed the roots of today's thriving paper industry. By the late nineteenth century, Wisconsin was one of the premier lumber producing states in the U.S., and from 1890 to 1910 forest products led Wisconsin's developing industrial economy.
Despite its obvious potential, logging was only a minor activity for the first white settlers, who actually brought lumber with them from the East at great expense. Throughout most of the 1830s, logging was carried out on a small scale around Prairie du... more...
Original Documents and Other Primary Sources
 | The development of the lumber industry in Western Wisconsin |
| A lumberjack describes living conditions in lumber camps in the 1850s |
| Peshtigo residents look back, 50 years after the Great Fire |
| Rafting lumber down the Wisconsin River in 1849 |
| A rafting trip down the Wisconsin River in 1868 |
| A lumberjack recalls an 1898 forest fire |
| Community-building in the northern forest in the 1880s. |
| Peshtigo's priest recalls surviving the fire |
| Lumberjack tales of Paul Bunyan |
| Recollections of Old Superior |
| A Made-to-Order Farm to lure settlers northward, 1921 |
| An 1886 visit to the Menominee community of Keshena |
| Recollections of logging the Chippewa Valley, 1844-1916. |
| More than 100 articles on logging and the lumber industry |
 | A mid-1800s birchbark maple sugar container |
 | The history and traditions of the Chippewa Valley |
| The marvelous exploits of Paul Bunyan |
| The wild animals of Paul Bunyan's Northwoods |
| Wisconsin's earliest forest conservation plea, 1867 |
| An 1875 history of the Chippewa Valley |
| Memoirs of an Interpreter among the Ojibwe, 1840-1900 |
| Folklore and folktales collected by Charles E. Brown |
| A Guide to CCC Camps in Wisconsin, 1937 |
| Descriptions of Wisconsin disasters and catastrophes, 1848-1948 |
| Stockbridge and Munsee Testimony, 1892 |
| Proceedings of the Forest History Association of Wisconsin (1976-1985) |
| Proceedings of the Forest History Association of Wisconsin (1986-1995) |
| Proceedings of the Forest History Association of Wisconsin (1996-2006) |
| A guide to the Great Lakes lumber industry, 1886 |
| Report on the Menominee at Termination, 1958 |
 | Life in the logging camps, as shown in historic photographs. |
| Prairie du Chien merchant and judge James H. Lockwood, 1856. |
| An advertisement tries to attract settlers to the cutover region. |
| Pictures of the cutover lands in northern Wisconsin |
| Increase Lapham examining a meteorite, ca. 1868 |
 | John Deitz makes his case, 1906 |
| The lumber company makes its case against Deitz, 1906 |
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