LOO     IN THE XARAK    ARM
Not til Fricke built his mill in the 1870s and John Leaomer in 1882 was the mar-
ket opened for the wealth of timber in the surrounding area.Pat the railroad had not
yet come to haul it to the markets, and. floating it down the river or hauling it to
railroad cars at Wausau, was still very time consuming and expensive.    But the set-
lers could now get their own logs sawed into lumber for building up their homes, and
fram houses came into use instead of log houses.
The axe, five to six foot cross-cut saws, the crotch for skidding logs together,
the sled, the oxen and chain comprised their logging equipment. Horses were few, but
as the farms became larger and logging more profitablethey gradually supplanted the
slover amen.
When the railroad came to town in 1891, logging became more profitable. In 1894,
Philip Mensner, Sr. built his saw and planing mills.    Rib Falls was also served by
the railroad, and a large mill there consumed much timber.   The Italian mill in the
town of Emnet, the Connor Lumber Co., which built its own railroad through the for-
ests in the Halder vicinity, the older mills along the Little Rib River northeast of
herethe large Ringle and Sohill mill at Edgar and the mills at Mosinee,all contrib-
uted to the fast dwindling of the timber supply in this area.
Since 1925 the Menner Lumber Compan bought tracts of tinberwith or without the
land#to obtain logs to keep their mill busy. When the crawler tractor came into use
thq mad. up trains of logging sled md brought as much as six thousand feet of logs
in mre trip, while the average team of horses hauled about one thousand feet.
The introduction of motor trucks in the late 1920'a supplanted the sleigh in log
tranaportation.With a semi-trailer a truck would haul as much as three thousand feet
of logs at    once and was able to travel up    to thirty  miles per hour while the
average team traveled about four miles per hour.
Another big change cane in logging procedure after World War II, by the introduc-
tion of the gasoline driven portable chain saw. This displaced the cross-cut saw and
to a great extent the axe.   B this time the farm tractors and crawler tractors had
also taken the place of the horses for skidding the logs together.
But the pine and hemlock had near3ly disappeared and some was being shipped in from
northern Wisconsin and Michigan by track and rail to keep the mills occupied during
the winter months.   There has been no log sawing during the summer for several dec-
ades.

WAmn~w TS    MMDPATIC9 33 m. M,.ARAM AIM-
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