Leech Lake Village was renamed Walker, Minnesota, after Ohio lumber baron Thomas B. Walker came to the area in 1862 and began buying up the surrounding timberland. The village was incorporated on March 10, 1896, and one month later the Minnesota Logging Company completed a 1,400 foot wooden trestle across Shingobee Bay of Leech Lake and extended the Brainerd & Northern Minnesota Railroad into Walker, where it also built a depot, water tower, and roundhouse. Walker remained the end of the line until the Leech Lake Lumber Company opened its mill on the shores of Leech Lake there in 1906. The company had six years of cut logs floating in Walker Bay and sawed 24 hours a day for nearly 20 years. Steamboats pulled huge booms of logs from around the region, including nearby Boy Lake and other small surrounding lakes, and railroad cars hauled fully loaded logs to mills in nearby cities. As forests fell to the woodsman's ax, Boy Lake Tree Farm helped grow them back.