The Last Sawmill in La Farge

There is an empty lot now, covered with snow.  The buildings that once housed the workings of the sawmill have been dispersed – scattered with the four winds.  (Actually, one of the buildings was torn down, while the others were trucked off to other sites.)  The cement piers that once supported the conveyor that moved the logs from the trucks towards the debarker are all that remain of the last sawmill in La Farge.

            This past summer, sawmill operations shut down at Schroers Hardwood Lumber on north Mill Street on La Farge’s west end.  Lumber had been produced at the site since the early 1950’s and the Schroer operation had been active there for forty years.  But all things must end, so Russ and Sharon Schroer decided to close the sawmill and sell off the machinery and property.

            In September an auction was held to disperse the sawmill buildings, machinery and vehicles.  A large crowd was on hand and the bidding was lively.  An out-of-state buyer bidding on the Internet bought most of the mill’s machinery.  More local buyers purchased the other equipment and buildings.  Within a few weeks, the inner workings of the mill had been disassembled, loaded onto semi trailers and hauled away from the Kickapoo Valley for good.  The buildings were all gone by the end of October.  One of the buildings was torn down by the Amish, the materials salvaged for future use.  The main building did not go far and is now used for storage at its location in the southern part of the village.  The lumber mill’s office building resides on Weister Creek for now. 

            And so it was that the rich history of saw mills in La Farge perhaps came to an end in 2013.  The village has had at least one working sawmill in operation since its very beginning in the 19^th century.  La Farge actually became a thriving town because of the sawmill operations and the lumber that was produced from them.  Perhaps we should pause and look back at that illustrious history of when the sawmills and lumber businesses made La Farge the most dynamic town on the Kickapoo.

            When the railroad line built along the Kickapoo River reached La Farge in late 1897, it created an immediate boom in the small town’s economy.  As the northern terminal of the branch line that connected to the main railroad lines at Wauzeka, La Farge became a very busy place as various products came and went on the railroad.  Lumber was one of the chief products that were leaving La Farge on the new railroad.

             There was already one sawmill, the Seely mill operating on the Kickapoo on the northern end of the hamlet, when the railroad reached La Farge.  Charles Seely, the son of founder Dempster (who had passed away in 1895), built a new dam on the Kickapoo River during that time (downriver from the site of the previous dam) to provide better power for both the gristmill and sawmill that he owned.

 Dempster Seely had built the first dam and mill at the site on the river in the 1860’s.  His lumber mill flourished for the next thirty years as the abundant stands of white pine were felled and sawn into lumber.  The Kickapoo River was used extensively in Dempster Seely’s lumber operation, which was one of the largest in the Kickapoo Valley.  The logs were floated to the mill at Seelyburg, where waterpower from the river ran the sawmill.  Much of the sawn lumber was used locally, but some was floated down the river in long rafts to other markets.  By the 1890’s, most of the northern Kickapoo’s pine trees were gone.  With the new railroad extending the line to his mill in Seelyburg, Charles Seely had new markets for hardwood lumber, which was still abundant in the area.

  In 1897, the same year that the railroad arrived, the Hammer brothers from Hillsboro opened up a second sawmill in La Farge.  Located along Mill Street to the south of the railroad terminal, the Hammer Brothers’ mill specialized in the making of heading bolts.  Later the mill was expanded to include both a stave and heading production factory.  In the winter, which was the best time to harvest lumber from area farms, it was not uncommon for sixty or seventy wagonloads of lumber to come into La Farge on a good day.  In the winter of 1897-98 over 2,500 cords were delivered for heading bolts at $1.25 per cord.  The mill also bought white oak heading bolts in 15-22 inch lengths for eight cents per cord foot.  The heading mill produced 236,000 pieces in one two-week period in April of 1898.

In February of that year, the Hammer Brothers’ mill and factory had gone to around-the-clock operations to meet the production demands for finished lumber.  They used a whistle to signal the start and finish of the 12-hour shifts and lunch hours for workers.  It is believed that the present whistle (siren) times used in La Farge originated from that early lumber factory whistle schedule.

With the two mills in La Farge operating at peak efficiency, the demand for buyers for lumber soon was needed.  Lumber brokers came to the new railroad village to purchase products to ship out to various markets in the Midwest.  Lumber brokers would travel to the rural areas around La Farge, purchasing sawn lumber from mills operating at Dell, Weister Creek, Warner Creek, Buckeye Ridge, North Bear Creek, South Bear Creek and other locations.

By 1898, the partnership of Knutson & Johnson was the biggest lumber broker in La Farge.  They had followed the railroad line north from Soldiers Grove in 1897.  Buying the property to the east of the railroad depot on the corner of Mill and Main Streets (the present site of Nuzum’s), Knutson & Johnson had a lumberyard that often took in 25,000 board feet of lumber in a week’s time.  The lumber brokers averaged a boxcar shipped out every week on the nearby railroad and in June of 1898 sent out a train with thirty carloads of lumber.

The demand for suitable hardwood lumber gave the farmers in the La Farge area a ready market for most of the timber they were clearing to create fields for crops.  Hauling of the logs had to be done in the winter when bobsleds could be used to glide over the frozen, snow covered roads.  Winter cuts of timber also made for the best lumber because of the absence of sap in the logs.  As the wagonloads of logs were coming into La Farge, the timber delivered to the mills was called “Kickapoo wheat”.  Each spring, the lumberyards of La Farge would be piled high with logs ready for the spring and summer cut of lumber.

La Farge’s retail lumber business changed in May of 1899, when John E. Nuzum returned to town.  Nuzum, owner of a successful lumberyard in Viroqua, had first opened a yard in La Farge located north of Belcher’s Hotel on State Street in 1897.  The following year he sold the La Farge lumberyard to Levi Millison and left the village.  Returning in 1899, Nuzum in partnership with M.D. Chase purchased Millison’s business and bought out the other retail lumber business in town owned by the Minor brothers.  Nuzum combined both businesses into the La Farge Lumber Company, which opened on the western end of Main Street, near the Hammer Brothers mill and the railroad depot.  Levi Millison was made manager of Nuzum’s new La Farge operation.

In October of 1899, August Kriigel bought out the La Farge lumber business of Knutson & Johnson.  Kriigel was well known in the lumber trade in the northern Kickapoo Valley.  Living in the Rockton area, Kriigel had earlier worked for Van Bennett at the Rockton mill and for Dempster Seely.  By the time that he purchased the La Farge business, he was the largest lumber broker in the area.  In August and September of 1899 he shipped forty-two carloads of lumber out of La Farge.  Within a year of his purchase of the La Farge business, Kriigel would expand his operation by becoming the Kickapoo Valley representative for the Brittingham & Young Hardwood Lumber Company.

ABSTRACTS & DEEDS

Lots 1,2,3 & 10,11,12; Block 4; Bailey’s Plat; Village of La Farge

            It is a piece of land in the Kickapoo Valley.

            It has a story to tell.

            The deed for the piece of land denotes ownership.  With the deed in hand and the piece of land registered at the land office, ownership is secured.

            The abstract of the piece of land narrates the story of the ownership of the land; it tells who has owned it over the years.  The question of who sold it to whom is answered on the narration of the land that is the abstract.

            Ownership for the piece of land could be determined only after the lands of the Kickapoo Valley were surveyed and marked into grids and squares.  That was done in 1846 by a crew of government surveyors who dragged their measuring chains rod by rod up the Valley in January of that year.  Wisconsin became a state two years later and land offices were established so that deeds for pieces of land could be entered.

            In 1853, Thomas DeJean came to this part of the Valley and probably walked on this piece of land.  He went to the nearest land office, located in Mineral Point, and laid claim to his land in the Kickapoo Valley.  For a few dollars paid down, DeJean had legal claim to his Kickapoo Valley land, but not this particular piece of land whose story we tell.   He returned two years later to the Kickapoo Valley and with his son, Anson, they began to claim a homestead from the wilderness.

            It was Anson who first made a legal claim on this piece of land, as he purchased it from the United States government in 1856.  President Franklin Pierce authorized the purchase transaction for this piece of land and the deed was entered at the land office in Mineral Point.  Anson’s piece of land laid to the west of his father’s.  Together, the DeJeans, father and adopted son, owned all the lands where Otter Creek and Bear Creek flow into the Kickapoo.  They owned the land south of the trail that ran from east to west through this part of the Valley and Anson’s lands lay on both sides of the Kickapoo River and on west along Otter Creek.

            Anson and Thomas DeJean built a sawmill and then a gristmill and bought more land for their lumbering pursuits.  In 1882, Anson DeJean sold this piece of land of whose story we tell to John Bailey. 

            The Baileys were farmers and soon had milking cows on the land and bought milk from their neighbors and made cheese on their farm for others to buy.  “Ma” Bailey ran a general store from a room next to where they made cheese.  Money was scarce then, so Ma Bailey operated a bank of sorts out of her apron for neighbors and friends to conduct business in the place that became known as DeJean’s Corners.

            In 1896, when word came that a railroad was coming to this place that was now known as La Farge, John Bailey was the first to officially plat his lands for sale.  He divided his lands and lots were sold to people anxious to own land in the railroad boomtown.

            In 1901, two brothers, John and Fred Thayer, purchased this piece of land of whose story we tell.  The Thayer brothers were businessmen and soon built a general store facing the busy Main Street of the boomtown.  Since lumbering was fueling the boom in La Farge, the Thayer brothers also became lumber retailers and built a large shed attached to the south end of their store to house those operations.  The lumber business became so lucrative and demanding of their time, that the Thayer brothers soon dropped the general store line of goods.  With their lumber business located within a few hundred yards of the railroad line and the various processing mills in La Farge, the Thayer brothers business flourished.  John Thayer eventually left the business partnership with his brother.  In 1904, Fred Thayer sold his lumber business on this piece of land to his son-in-law, Levi Millison, who had been working in the lumber business for some time.

            Floodwaters from the Kickapoo covered this piece of land in 1907.  Water ran through Levi Millison’s buildings and in that year he sold the land and business back to Fred Thayer.  By that time, Levi was heavily involved in speculations on lands in the West.  After selling the La Farge lumber business back to his father-in-law, Levi left the Kickapoo Valley and moved his family west to Montana.  The Thayer Lumber Company continued on this piece of land for another two decades. 

            Fred Thayer passed away in December 1927.  His son, Emory, ran the business on this piece of land until 1929 when the family sold out to Nuzum’s Lumber, their main lumber retail competitor in La Farge.  Emory Thayer was made the manager of Nuzum’s La Farge operation soon after.  The old Thayer Lumber buildings became additional storage space for Nuzum’s products.  Lots 10, 11, & 12, which fronted onto Snow Street, were used for outside storage of products. 

Floodwaters from the Kickapoo again covered this piece of land in 1935.  This land remained a part of the Nuzum’s retail lumber operation for more than two more decades.  Eventually, Nuzum’s Lumber no longer needed the piece of land for their business.

            Lester Fulmer bought Lots 1 and 2 and the buildings located on that piece of land from Nuzum’s in 1952.  Fulmer, who was active in a variety of businesses in La Farge, used the office of the old lumber store briefly, but then sold the buildings and the two lots to the Town of Stark in 1953.  The township used the old lumber office for a town hall and the shed to store its road maintenance equipment.  In 1954, Stark bought lot 3 of this piece of land from Ralph Nuzum and purchased lots 10-12 from him in 1958 to reunite the parcels, as they had been most of the time since being platted.  The township stored sand and gravel on the lots until 1986, when they moved much of their road maintenance operation to the Corps of Engineers maintenance building at the dam site north of La Farge.  The Town of Stark continued to use the old office for a town hall and the shed for recycling and storage of the township’s road grader.  With the lots empty, the township began renting the space to the nearby truck center for vehicle parking.

            Kickapoo floodwaters again swept through the buildings on this piece of land in June 2008.  The town hall building was condemned after the flood’s damages and the township began looking for other land options for their building needs.               

It is shown on the plat maps as Lots 1,2,3 & 10,11,12 of Block 4 of Bailey’s Plat in the Village of La Farge.  Three lots fronting Main Street; three lots on Snow Street; divided by a platted alley running east and west in the middle of the piece of land.  It is owned by the Town of Stark, but will soon be sold to Earl Nelson for use with his truck center business.  His name will be placed on the deed and his name added to the narrative of the abstract for this piece of land, as its story continues to be told.