| built, Mr. Balcom took advantage of him by buying more timber
and driving more logs out of the of the Waupee Brook than the Oconto Company
did, and he insisted that we go back to the beginning of operations on
McCauslin Brook and adjust everything from that time on,including the timber
still standing and owned by each Company. Mr. Balcom refused to do this
because he said that the Oconto Company had taken advantage of us when
the dams were built on Little River, and he made the proposition that we
go back to the beginning of the joint operations and ascertain how much
each Company had driven, but Mr. Farnsworth refused to listen to that.
The result was that no logging was done on McCauslin Brook for three years.
But during the spring of 1887 Mr. Brooks, who was then president of the
Oconto Company, proposed that we come to some agreement to pro rate the
expense and proceed to rebuild these dams. In the meantime there had been
a bad forest fire in the vicinity of Boot Lake, which burned a lot of the
timber belonging to the Oconto Company and Eldred, and they had to cut
this timber and haul the logs to the North Branch with teams, a distance
of about twelve miles. All of this timber could have been put into McCauslin
Brook on a short haul. They found this operation so expensive that they
gave it up after one winter.
We succeeded in making an agreement with Mr. Brooks under which we were to pay 26/36ths of the cost, and Oconto Company were to pay 10/36ths, being based on the estimate of 26 million feet owned by us and 10 million feet owned by Oconto Company. Mr. Farnsworth had spent the winter in Algiers and shortly after the agreement had been signed with the Oconto Company he returned home. Father met him on the street in Chicago and Mr. Farnsworth wanted to know what had been going on during his absence. Father told him we had just concluded an agreement with the Oconto Company to put in the dams on McCauslin Brook. Mr. Farnsworth flew into a rage and said that he would show Jim Brooks that although he was president of the Oconto Company, he (Mr. Farnsworth) owned the majority of the stock and he would not agree to any such arrangement However, we never heard any more from Mr. Farnsworth about it and during the summer of 1887 we proceeded to rebuild the dams and clear out the Brook, and by fall we had everything in good shape for driving. The Eldred Company had some timber left near Boot Lake, and Mr.
Eldred refused to join with us in rebuilding the dams, but my father got
Mr. Eldred to agree to a meeting with my father and myself in Milwaukee
to talk the matter over. We met June 6, 1886, at the old Plankinton Hotel,
and after a while Father proposed that the old people keep out of it and
that he leave it with his son Howard Eldred, and Father would leave our
interests in my hands, and whatever was agreed to would be accepted by
both parties. Mr. Eldred expressed great pride and confidence in his son
Howard, and Father got him to sign a paper agreeing to leave the matter
to Howard and myself.
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I caught a train on the Milwaukee & Northern Railroad and
went to Green Bay that night, but found that Howard was not home so I went
on to Oconto. A little later I met Howard and he said that he would not
be willing to go ahead on the strength of that letter, but that he would
go to Milwaukee and talk with his father and see if he could get the matter
fixed up. Later he said his father would not agree to leave it with him
but he would agree to having a meeting with us in Green Bay to talk it
over. So Mr. Ellis and I went to Green Bay on the night train and stayed
at a hotel and the next morning we went to Mr. Eldred's office, where we
met him and Howard. After some general conversation Mr. Ellis left and
said he would leave it all to me, so Mr. Eldred and I finally came to an
agreement by which he was to pay us about $3000.00 as his proportion of
the cost and this agreement was carried out and all parties appeared to
be satisfied
We continued logging on McCauslin Brook until the spring of 1893, at which time the Oconto Company and Eldred had got all of their Pine logs out, and we had about one winter's work left between the Archibald and Wheeler Dam. On account of the depression which began in 1893, and the fact that we carried over a large quantity of logs and held a large stock of lumber in the yard, we cut down our logging operations in the winter of l894 and closed the camp on McCauslin Brook. There never were any logs driven out of McCauslin Brook after that time. A few years later this camp was burned. In 1926 we built a now camp on McCauslin Brook, in Section 36,
Town 33 Range 15, on the site of the old one, and built logging railroads
through all of the timber that we had left in that vicinity, and operated
the camp for several years, cutting selectively all of the timber on six
sections of land. We also left standing about seventeen acres which was
chiefly covered with White Pine and Norway Pine, which we named the Cathedral
Woods, and some Pine around Archibald Lake. After the last of this timber,
except the Pine, was cut in 1936 the railroad was taken up and the camps
torn down.
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