The St. Croix River ranked second only to the Mississippi as a carrier of logs and lumber, with white pine logs from trees felled by lumberjacks in winter driven downstream to sawmills in spring and millions of logs milled by water-and-steam-powered machinery. Between 1839 and 1895, more than 197 million board feet of lumber were milled here, enough to build about 18,000 average-size homes. The mill passed through a succession of owner-operators: David Hone and Lewis Judd ran it from 1839 to 1848, when the Marine Lumber Company became Judd, Walker and Company, and twenty years later the firm was reorganized as the Walker, Judd and Veazie Lumber Company. After that operation went bankrupt in 1885, the mill reopened in 1888 under the Anderson and O'Brien Company, but heavy logging depleted the timber of the St. Croix River valley and forced the mill to close permanently in 1895.