Washburn grew on the shore of Chequamegon Bay after work on a town site began in 1883 and the town was created in 1884 to meet the needs of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha railway for deep docks and flat land for rail cars and shipping. The site, once centered on a small lumber camp, covered 366 acres of pine that were cleared as docks and railroad facilities were built, including a long pier and harbor works on Lake Superior. Lumber mills followed, including a sawmill built in 1885 by Cook and Co. of Muskegon, and by 1887 Washburn’s three large mills were producing vast quantities of lumber. Other mills and factories processed pine, birch, hardwood, hemlock, and other timber, while hemlock bark was shipped for tanning. With 2 billion feet of standing pine in Bayfield County, much of it around Washburn, the city became a boom town of 4,000 people, shipping lumber by rail and boat and surpassing other Lake Superior ports in board-foot shipments. The boom faded after much of the timber had been stripped by 1900, and the mills closed. At this spot stood the Hines Lumber Company, formerly the Bigelow Brothers Mills, which Edward Hines purchased in 1902 along with 200,000 feet of stumpage and a 51-mile logging railroad. Hines, who had begun modestly in Chicago as a grocery worker, tally boy, and office boy before organizing the Edward Hines Lumber Co. in May 1892, built one of the largest lumber enterprises in the U.S., acquiring mills, timber lands, fleets, railroads, and vast holdings from Wisconsin and Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest and from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico.