Like many of the communities founded along the
Wisconsin River, the place where Wausau would
eventually emerge was first settled because of the
good waterpower provided by the falls here.
In 1838, George Stevens led the first expedition of
Europeans up the Wisconsin River with the goal of
establishing a sawmill that would allow for the harvest
of the Great Pinery. The first buildings Stevens put up
were on the islands along the rapids, then known as
Big Bull Falls. By 1839, the first basic sawmill was up
and running at Big Bull Falls, starting a half century of
lucrative lumbering.
Over the next few years, an annual pattern emerged.
Pine trees cut upriver by lumberjacks during the winter
would be stacked along the riverbanks until the spring
thaw. Logs were then floated along the waterways
swelled by the thaw down to the sawmills at Big Bull
Falls (and a few other sawmills set up along the river).
The volume of trees that arrived at Wausau was far too
much for the sawmills to handle right away. The logs
were held in calm-water areas, sometimes aided by
small boom dams. Logs were pulled from the water
and stacked onto the riverbanks and islands. When the
mills were ready, they would be pushed back into the
water and maneuvered over to the sawmills to be cut
up for market.
After the building of the railroads in the 1870s and 1880s,
the sawmills along the Wisconsin River increasingly
brought in pine and, later, hardwoods by train instead
of floating them down the river. The change allowed the
harvest of lumber far from streams large enough to float
rafts of logs.
Sawmills at Big Bull Falls also underwent changes
over the years. New mills were built, existing mills
changed hands (and names), and occasionally a mill
was destroyed by fire.
The Wisconsin River continues to run through Wausau,
even if it no longer powers the sawmills that built the
community. While the sawmills are gone and you no
longer see great tangles of pine logs flowing down the
Wisconsin River, the legacy of the lumber industry
remains central to the history of Wausau.
