By the time John Baptiste DuBay made his home in
what would become Mosinee, he had already had a long
and distinguished career. He had managed the Lac du
Flambeau trading post for the American Fur Company,
managed a similar post near Fort Winnebago and even
operated a small trading post some 11 miles north of
Stevens Point, which was widely known as “DuBay.”
Trading posts were the centers of settlements, where
mostly European traders collected the beaver pelts and
other furs harvested by Native Americans, which were
exchanged for trade goods. But over-harvesting of
beaver had led to near extinction in places and the
changing tastes in fashion away from beaver-felt hats
led to the almost complete collapse of the fur trade in
the mid-1800s. Some fur trade continued, but by the
time the newest Americans were moving up to harvest
the Pinery and settle in the Wisconsin River Valley, the
fur trade was not the lucrative occupation it once was.
John DuBay got his start as an enterprising fur trader,
but was much more to the community. In about 1845,
he was hired by Portage County to survey and blaze a
trail from Stevens Point north to Wausau. (At that time
Portage County included the modern-day counties of
Wood, Marathon, Lincoln and more). This would bring
lumbermen up to develop the communities in
Marathon County and beyond.
Almost a century later, the road DuBay laid out was
further developed and improved to become the core
of U.S. Highway 51. Between 1939 and 1940, the highway
was developed to prepare for another, larger project;
building a new hydroelectric dam near Knowlton. This
dam was built by Consolidated Water Power in Wisconsin
Rapids in the early 1940s and it shifted the course of the
Wisconsin River to create a new lake. The resulting body
of water was named “Lake DuBay,” in honor of the
pioneering citizen of the Pinery.
