From 1856 to 1914, the St. Croix Boom was the center of the logging industry on the St. Croix River, where logs cut from northern forests entered the marketplace. Each spring, loggers used the river's current to float their winter cut downstream to the Boom Site, where logs moved into a complex system of channels and holding pens that stretched for miles. There workers sorted the logs to determine ownership and measured board feet, after which owners arranged for the timber to be milled locally or sent farther downstream. Hundreds of companies floated logs on the river each year, and because the logs mixed together in the water, logging camps registered unique bark and log marks that were hammered into the logs to identify them. During the 58 years of the Boom Site's operation, more than 2,000 unique marks were used, and when the site closed on June 12, 1914, more than 13 billion board feet had passed through. This lumber became houses, barns, fence posts, doors, and other building materials that helped make settlement of the treeless Great Plains possible.

Photo: McGhiever

Houlton, Wisconsin · USA