The felling of Iron County’s great stands of timber began in the late 1870’s, with white pine cut first and floated down the Turtle River and over Lake of the Falls to sawmills farther south. In spring, when the rivers were highest, log drives depended on dams built here at Lake of the Falls and upstream at Shea’s Dam to provide the flush of water needed to push the logs downstream. These intense pinery days were short, and by 1906 the last stands of white pine had been cut. The virgin hardwood timber that remained was more difficult to move because it did not float like pine, and the Roddis Lumber and Veneer Company solved that problem as early as 1903 by creating a logging railroad into the timberlands west of Lake of the Falls. By the mid-1920’s the Roddis Line had spread like branches on a tree, connecting 15 logging company camps to the mainline track, and timber continued to reach sawmills by rail instead of water until dwindling wood supplies and the Great Depression forced the line to abandon operations in 1938, ending Iron County’s logging railroad era.