The Menominee River, named after the Menominees who lived here until they moved to the Wolf River in the 1850's, served as the main artery of commerce until the 1850's as Indians and fur traders carried furs downriver by canoe to a fur trading post operated by Marinette, a French Indian woman, and her partner William Farnsworth. After the fur trade declined in the late 1820's, Farnsworth turned to lumbering in 1831, and from 1865 to 1895 the Menominee became one of the most important lumbering rivers in the Upper Great Lakes. Trees cut upstream were floated downriver and sawed into lumber on both sides of the river from this bridge to the bay; in summer the river above this island was choked with logs, while below it schooners and barges anchored to be loaded with finished lumber bound for Chicago. Lumbering declined beginning in the 1890's, with the last log drive in 1917 and the last sawmill in Marinette closing on July 31, 1931. The river still divides industrial and residential Marinette, with foundries, factories, and shipyards downriver replacing sawmills and the homes of lumbermen's families remaining upriver on Riverside Avenue. It remains a vital waterway, with a source only 12 miles from Lake Superior, a channel formed by the confluence of the Brule and Michigamme Rivers a little over 100 miles upstream, a drop of nearly 700 feet before reaching this island, ten hydroelectric dams creating reservoirs, four papermills using its water, and many tributaries and parts of the river still wild and untamed.