Washburn Saw Mill

Built in 1872 by W.D. Washburn and Co., the Washburn Saw Mill produced 16 million board feet of lumber annually, and together with planing mills and dry kilns employed about 125 men. For 17 years, logs from the headwaters of the Rum River at Lake Mille Lacs and its tributaries were floated down to the mill, and the products made there were shipped throughout the Midwest. White pine was the preferred logging tree; a mature 150-foot pine could have a trunk up to 5 feet in diameter, with branches beginning more than 50 feet above its base, and a tree of that size could yield as many as six 16-foot logs. Logs were cut in winter, stockpiled, and moved downstream to mills in spring. Anoka was closest to the white pine stands, had the Rum River for power, and had rail service to move finished goods, so by 1881 four saw mills were operating there. Local newspapers promoted Anoka as Minnesota's largest lumbering town in the 1870s, though it never truly rivaled Minneapolis. Of the nearly 162 million logs sent down the river in 1875, only about 31 million board feet were scaled in Anoka. The Washburn Mill survived Anoka's great fire of 1884 through the efforts of the mill superintendent. Water-powered mills were less reliable because they depended on river levels, and when the Rum River lacked enough water to carry logs, loggers built dams upstream from camps and released stored water to float them downstream. That practice destroyed wild rice crops upstream and caused conflicts with Native Americans, and many logging companies paid damages because the camps needed to trade with Native Americans for food. As steam power became available, mills could be located anywhere, and logs were moved by the expanding railroad network.

Anoka, Minnesota · United States