The birth of the world’s largest white pine operation 02-02-2014 2377
In 1822, two Prairie du Chien rival fur traders, Joseph Rollette and James H. Lockwood, found that fur bearing animals such as the beaver and mink were beginning to be a scarcity, so despite of the years of completion as fur traders, they joined together to back a friend, Harding Perkins of Prairie du Chien, in establishing and operating a saw mill on Meadow Creek, now known as Wilson Creek, at its junction with the Menomonie River, today’s Red Cedar River. However it was not a simple task to gain permission to build the dam and mill from the U.S. Indian agent, Major Lawrence Taliaferro (pronounced “Tolliver) at Fort Snelling near the site of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.
Taliaferro was reluctant to approve the plan, but after learning that Chief Wabasha, the second of four Dakota chiefs of that name, had given Rollette and Lockwood permission to construct the mill operation in the Indian territory that included the Red Cedar River, a permit that included a payment of $1,000 a year to the Dakota tribe that claimed the land.
That decision was opposed by Col. Josiah Snelling, the commander of Fort Snelling. However by the time Col. Snelling threatened to send a military force to destroy the mill that about to begin operating, it was unnecessary when one of those sudden freshlets to which hilly countries are subject, swept away the dam, mill and appendages, and Perkins returned to Prairie du Chien with his family and a crew of about twenty men. They had suffered during their residence there considerably from fear of the Chippewa [Ojibwe] Indians who resided near and sometimes visited the mill builders.”
So the project was abandoned, but as noted in the book, the 1925 History of Dunn County, “….the Indians insisted upon its payment...We were obliged to tell them that their Great Father would not allow us to do so. They said they had given us permission, and that the country was theirs, and the Great Father had no right to say anything about it.”
However the importance of the white pine timber on the Menomonie River prompted another adventurer, John Fonda, to come to the mouth of today’s Varney Creek, in the winter of 1829-30, with a crew of 74 men to cut the white pine timber for the rebuilding Fort Crawford in Wisconsin’s second oldest community, Prairie du Chien.
“In the fall of 1829 the U. S. Secretary of War gave permission to erect a mill and dam provided we contacted the Indians through the Indian agent at Prairie du Chien”. In May, 1830, months after the Prairie du Chien men left the area, permission was granted to build a dam and mill on the site where the Perkin’s attempt had failed.
That dam and mill eventually became the site in 1846 of the birth of the Tainter & Black lumber company, that also included the skillful mill management of Captain William Wilson. It was Wilson, who actually was the man who discovered that the little milling operation on Wilson Creek was for sale. But he needed the money that Andrew Tainter, back in Fort Madison, Iowa, who had just inherited some money upon the death of his father, to put the down payment on the mill offered for sale by an ill David Black.
This was the beginning of what became the Menomonie-based Knapp, Stout & Co. Company, and its dozens of lumber mills, farms, and pine lands under its ownership, that eventually became the largest white pine processer in the world by the 1880s. It operated until the fall of 1901.
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An artist painted this portrait of Joseph Rollett, a former fur trader who joined one time rival trader, James Lockwood, in establishing a saw mill at the mouth of Meadow Creek, known today as Wilson Creek. Harding Perkins was the manager of the little mill in 1822.
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Major Lawrence Taliaferro, pronounced “Tolliver”, was the Indian agent based at Fort Snelling located at the junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. Taliaferro first opposed the building Perkins’ sawmill, but when Chief Wabasha, the second of the four Chief Wabasha’s that served the Dakota tribe consecutively, agreed to trade with Perkins, Taliaferro approved the building of the dam and mill.
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Col. Josiah Snelling, the commanding officer of Fort Snelling, opposed the establishment of the mill and began to take steps to close down the illegal operation. Before any action could be taken, flood waters washed out all traces of the mill and the dam at Menomonie.
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It is easy to see why the Red Cedar River, known then as the Menomonie river, was a very active and a convenient stream to serve the logging business in supplying easy access to lumber markets located on the Mississippi River. It was less than thirty-five river miles on the Red Cedar and Chippewa Rivers to the Mississippi River where the Knapp, Stout & Co. Company had its steamboat fleet established at Reads Landing, Minnesota, to push the rafts of lumber to the company’s wholesale and retail markets at Dubuque, Iowa, Fort Madison, Iowa, and St. Louis, Missouri.