Although Oconto County pine lumber would become famous across the
Midwest, the first mill was built for very different reasons. In the
early 1800s, John Arndt owned a large shipyard in Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania. Arndt's shipyard built mostly Durham boats, which were
wide, flat-bottomed open boats as much as sixty feet long and twelve
feet wide. Durham boats were usually moved with large poles, and were
popular for transporting goods, people and animals on wide, shallow,
rivers in Pennsylvania.

When Arndt and his family moved to what is now Green Bay in 1824, Arndt
discovered that his boats might sell well in the area. At that time, the
waters of Green Bay and the Fox River were the main highways through the
area, since no other roads existed, Fur traders transported their goods
in birchbark canoes, which were small and easy to tip over, or in
traditional French cargo boats called bateaux, which were hard to
maneuver. Like most pioneer businessmen, however, Arndt had to solve
problems that he hadn't faced in Pennsylvania. Arndt's main problem was
obtaining the right kind of wood for boat construction  he needed mostly
oak planks twenty to thirty feet long, as well as smaller amounts of
pine for the long, steering oar attached to the rear of the boat. Since
there were no sawmills nearby, Arndt had nowhere to get his lumber.

In 1826, Arndt leased a parcel of land near the mouth of the Pensaukee
River from the Menominee Indians, who still controlled the area at that
time. This lease is the first recorded in what is now Oconto County. In
the lease, the Menominee gave Arndt the right to build a sawmill and cut
any timber he needed. In return, Arndt agreed to give the Menominee as
much lumber as they needed, and to grind their grain in the grist mill
attached to the sawmill. By 1827, Arndt and another Green Bay,
businessman, Ebinezer Childs, had built a mill about one mile upriver
from the Pensaukee's mouth. This mill was powered by a water wheel, and
had one saw that could cut about 2,000 feet of lumber per day, a tiny
amount compared to mills built as little as ten years later. Only two
men were needed to run the mill. Oneida Indians were hired to cut logs
for the mill in the winter. The Durham boats became very popular; they
moved almost everything in the region until the first steamboats arrived
in the 1850S and 1860s.

Like most of the first buildings in wilderness area, Arndt's mill was
not built to last forever. By 1837 it was essentially worn out. Arndt
then bought out Childs' interest in the mill, rebuilt it and hired
Isaiah Powell to run it, but the new mill was no bigger and produced the
same kind and amount of timber as before. It is not clear how long
Arndt's mill continued to operate, but it was apparently still running
when he sold it to his son in 1841.