Black River Valley

White pine trees were growing in this valley when Columbus made his voyage to America. In 1819 the first attempts to saw lumber were unsuccessful, but in 1839 Jacob Spaulding founded Black River Falls by erecting the first permanent sawmill and settlement on the Black River. The valley contained the largest pine trees, some up to six feet across at ground level, and the most pine trees per township in the state. Before logging ended in 1905, more than fifty sawmills had operated in Jackson County. Accurate records kept over forty years reveal that enough lumber was sawed to have built a plank road nine feet wide and four inches thick around the world. Iron ore was smelted at Black River Falls in 1856 and again in 1886, but the old process proved too expensive and was abandoned. The Jackson County Iron Company, a subsidiary of Inland Steel, built a modern processing plant in 1969 that ships 2800 tons of taconite pellets every day of the year to its blast furnaces in Indiana. The mine buildings and open pit mine are visible from the overlook on top of Bell Mound.

Manchester, Wisconsin · United States