| on which no end mark was visible. He had only a few men and
one dividing pier, and he had to handle the entire drive in order to get
his logs out, so Urquhart said that there was an accumulation of logs which
filled the pond and backed up on the main river and that the drive would
be hung up if he was not allowed to sluice the logs through the Flatrock
Dam without being held up by Peterson. I told him that under no circumstances
could he permit the drive to be hung up, and for him to tell Peterson that
we would keep careful count of all of his logs which came down the river,
and would pay him in the fall what they were worth. Urquhart went back
and got out his crew, as it was beginning to get light, about 3:00 A. M.
and opened the boom and started sluicing the logs. Peterson got wind of
it and came out to tell him that he could not do that, but Urquhart stood
his ground and he told Peterson to get out of his way or he would sluice
him too, and he proceeded to run the drive through the dam. Later on we
made a settlement with Peterson and paid him for all of the logs which
had his mark on which were sawed by the mills here during the summer. As
I recall It there was about 50,000 feet, Out of a drive of about 50,000,000
feet.
At an early date Joseph Leigh built a saw mill and grist mill on Little River at a place which has since been known as Leightown. He sawed and rafted lumber and floated it down the river and loaded it on vessels at the mouth of the river. One summer when the log booms had all been filled with logs and they were coming faster than the mills could saw them, his rafts of lumber were delayed at the upper dividing piers near Couillardtown. He brought a suit against Holt & Balcom for damages, claiming that they had no right to prevent the free passage of his lumber down river; while Holt & Balcom contended that they did all they could possibly do and could not divide logs when the booms below were full and the mills were unable to saw the logs as fast as they came. Leigh won the suit and I was told that what won the case for him was that Mr. Cole, disliking to have to pay the men at the dividing piers for doing nothing, took the crew and cleared up a forty of land a short distance from the dividing piers, thinking that he was saving some money, but as it turned out it was an expensive farm. We had another lawsuit which hinged on the use of flooding dams, with the Falls Manufacturing Company. They claimed that they were entitled to the natural flow of the river, and when the water in the river was low and we shut down our Flatrock Dam it cut off the flow of water so that their mills at Oconto Falls were unable to operate full time and they were caused great damagie. The question turned on whether or not the right of navigation was paramount to the right of the riparian owner, and we had to show that where the stream carded commerce it was a navigable steam even though commerce passed only in one direction and, therefore, it had the paramount right. The case was tried before Judge Hastings and decided in our favor; and carried to the Supreme Court, which also decided in our favor, although it was admitted, even by our lawyers, that in other states the same question had been decided differently. After that we made peace with the Falls Company and they sold us some stock in their Company, of which I became a Director, until it finally sold out to Eastern parties; and we managed to get along peaceably by our not interfering with the flow of the river more than was absolutely necessary. One winter I went up to the camps with Bill Starkey, who was
driving a four mule team and hauling supplies to the camp, and we
stayed over night at Depot
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Camp. We had a man with us who was going up to cook at a small
camp which Mr. Cole was starting and which he called Camp Nothing. This
cook asked Starkey where the depot was, as he had been all around there
and had seen no railroad. Starkey told him the depot was back in the woods
about half a mile, and the cook was much surprised when he found out there
was no rail-road within sixty miles. That same time Starkey told Mr. Clapp,
who was in charge of the Depot Camp, that I was going up to cookee at Camp
Nothing; and in the morning when Clapp asked me to sign my name in the
book, as he had to keep track of all of the men who stayed at the camp,
he was surprised to learn who I was and he gave Starkey quite a calling
down for telling him I was the cookee.
In the latter part of the 70s both Holt & Balcom and the
Oconto Company bought a considerable quantity of timber on McCauslin Brook
and proceeded to build some dams and blast rocks and clear out the stream
so that they could drive logs. There were five dams built on this Brook,
which were named as follows, beginning near the mouth of the Brook and
going up to its head waters, namely: The Lynes Dam, the Sheridan Dam, the
Archibald Dam, the Wheeler Dam, and the Reservoir Dam, and there was a
considerable quantity of logs driven successfully out of this stream each
year.
About the first of December 1884 the camps had just opened up
for the winter and were engaged in cutting logging roads and preparing
for sleigh hauling as soon as it froze up and snowed. Holt & Balcom
had two camps, Oconto Company one, and Eldred one. One day William Starkey,
who hauled supplies for us with a four mule team, took a load of supplies
from the Depot Farm-later called McCauslin Brook Farm-to Camp 2 on Bass
Lake north of the present village of Townsend.
After unloading his supplies and getting dinner for himself and teams,
he started back and where he crossed McCauslin Brook near the present site
of the cement bridge, on Highway 32, he noticed that the water in the Brook
was higher than usual, and was dirty, and he wondered what had happened.
After reaching the farm and putting his teams away for the night, he took
a horse and rode back to Camp 2, reaching there about 9:00 P. M. He told
Frank Wheeler, the foreman, about it and Wheeler at once said that Wheeler
Dam must have gone out, and taking a lantern and a few men he hurried down
to the dam but the water was already running over the wing of the dam and
it was impossible to raise the gates. Wheeler then sent a man on horseback
all the way down the river to notify different people that there was a
flood coming and to raise the gates of the dams. He was too late, however,
to save the dams on McCauslin Brook, all of which were washed out and also
the dam which was then known as the Old Dam, later known as Tar Dam, on
North Branch; and one wing of the Eldred Farm dam went out. The Chute Dam
and the Flatrock Dam were saved by raising the gates before the flood reached
them. As soon as the word reached Mr. Cole, in Oconto, he arranged to move
our camps to other locations. Camp I he moved to Section 35, Town 30, Range
17, and that camp, with Graham as foreman, logged the timber Into the South
Branch of the Oconto. Camp 2, with Frank Wheeler as foreman, was moved
to Section 16, Town 32, Range 17, at the head.
When it was proposed to rebuild the dams on McCauslin Brook Mr.
Farnsworth, who was then the president of the Oconto Company, refused to
join with us as he said that when the dams
were first
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