Beef Slough, a sluggish branch of the Chippewa River, served as an excellent storage pond for logs floated downstream by numerous logging companies. There loggers arranged mixed-up logs into orderly rafts to be towed by steamboats to sawmills down the Mississippi. The Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire sawmills felt threatened when the Beef Slough Manufacturing, Booming, Log Driving and Transportation Company was organized near here in 1867. Camp No. 1 built offices, a railroad depot, post office, church, and dormitories to house 600 men during the rafting season. Competition between the Eau Claire and Beef Slough interests developed into a brief dispute in 1868, sometimes called the "Beef Slough War." Its most important result was the arrival of Frederick Weyerhaeuser, whose Mississippi Logging Company brought skilled management and seemingly unlimited capital and changed logging operations on the Chippewa from locally operated activities into a major interstate industry.