Oconto County's peak logging era extended from the 1850s into the 1920s.
During that time the types of logs, harvested, and some of the specific
methods of, logging, changed a great deal, but the basic characteristics
of logging work and the logging economy remained much the same. Oconto
was one of several northern Wisconsin counties that participated heavily
in logging. The basic pattern of events in Oconto County was repeated,
with some variation in methods and time frames, across northern
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In all of
these places, pine logging started in the mid- 1800s, continued to about
1900, and was replaced by hardwood logging, which lasted through the
first decades of the twentieth century. Logging methods in the same time
period were often very similar from one state to the next. Therefore,
many lumber businessmen and lumber- jacks could move on to work in many
different regions.

Loggers in Oconto County and elsewhere began cutting pine in the
mid-1800s for many reasons. First, pine was the type of Wood most
popular in the United, States for constructing buildings, as well as for
making other basic necessities, such as plows and wagons. Pine is a soft
wood, which makes it easier to cut and carve, and pine trees tended to
produce long, straight pieces of wood with relatively  few knots. In an
era when few items could be made solely by a machine, and even doors and
window frames were often made by hand, this workability was very
important. Pine also floats well, which made transportation much easier,
since pine logs could be floated down river to a mill. Other types of
logs would often sink to the bottom. No roads or railroads existed yet,
so transporting logs overland was almost impossible.

Additionally, by the 1830s and 1840s, southern Wisconsin and Illinois
were drawing thousands of new settlers, many of whom started farms on
the prairies. These prairie farms had good soil, but not enough timber
to build houses and barns. Settlers on these farms desperately needed
sawed lumber. The older sawmills in the eastern United States could not
meet their demand. As a result, mills in Oconto County and elsewhere in
the Upper Midwest were able to sell all the pine lumber they could
manufacture to these fast growing areas to the south.

Most importantly, Oconto County was part of a huge area that was
naturally forested with millions of huge pine trees, many of which were
over six feet in diameter and several hundred feet tall. Many of these
trees rose straight up 100 to 200 feet before branching out. Oconto
Countys early lumbermen could get a great deal of long, clear boards out
of such a tree with relatively little work, and could often demand a
good price for their lumber. As a result, lumber camps almost
exclusively cut pine during the 1800s. Very few pines such as the, ones
they cut are left today, but there is one stand, known as the Cathedral
Pines near Archibald Lake, that still has several of these original
giants. This woods was left uncut at the request of the owner's wife.
Looking at these huge trees helps a person understand how much pine
timber must have come out of Oconto County.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND LOGGING

Almost all lumberjacks, cruisers, and other logging camp employees were
men, as were most people in most paying jobs in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. The physical demands of logging and the rough
wilderness lifestyle led most men and women of that era to believe that
women could never do logging work, since Americans commonly thought that
all women were weaker than men. Gender stereotypes such as this excluded
women from many jobs, not only in logging but in most other fields as
well. It is clear however that women in Oconto County and elsewhere
during this period did a great deal more than many people thought they
could. Women filled essential jobs in lumber camps, while other women
did demanding work that made it possible for their husbands and brothers
to work in the woods during the winter. From a very young age children
also worked hard, both in the logging camps and in the home.

One of the most common ways that women participated directly in logging
was as the camp cook or cookee. Few books on logging mention this fact,
but historic photos and first person accounts make clear that many camps
had a female cooking staff. This was particularly true in jobber and
independent camps. In many cases, the cook was the jobber's or camp
foreman's wife, while the bull cook might be the cook's adult daughter
or sister. Women tended to fall into the cook's roles because, of the
domestic cooking and cleaning they commonly did in the home, but cooking
for a logging camp demanded stamina and considerable physical strength.
Staples such as flour and salt pork were stored in barrels that often
weighed over one hundred pounds each. The large kettles and pots were
usually made of cast iron, also extremely heavy. Camp cooks often worked
over an open fire, fireplace, or wood burning stove, and cooks had to
make most items, such as bread, completely from scratch. Logging camp
cooks had to prepare meals for anywhere from ten to sixty or more people
per day. Such meals included a wider variety of foods and a larger
quantity of food than would be prepared in virtually any household. In
addition, the quality and quantity of the food served in a camp often
determined whether its owners would succeed or go bankrupt, since camps
with poor food could not keep their lumberjacks for long. As a result,
women who cooked for logging camps had a great deal of influence over
the camp's operation. The wife of popular logger Herman Dieck of Suring,
for example, often cooked in the camps her husband operated. The quality
of his camps' cooking was cited as one of the reasons for his success.

Women also frequently visited logging camps as representatives of
religious and moral issues organizations. Nuns, for example, frequently
traveled to logging camps seeking donations to orphanages and schools.
Representatives of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, a nineteenth
century organization devoted to stopping the sale and consumption of
alcohol, convinced hundreds of lumberjacks in northern Wisconsin to sign
a pledge stating that they would never drink liquor again. Such women
took serious risks in order to bring their messages to lumber camps,
since travel in the unsettled wilderness was difficult and dangerous
even for experienced woodsmen, let along visitors from more civilized
areas. Although individual lumberjacks may not have agreed with such a
visitor's values or requests, most accounts claim that such women were
almost universally treated with respect.

Children also worked in logging, often as assistants to the cook or as
the camp's "chore boy." Depending on the size of the camp, pre-teen and
teenaged girls often helped their mothers or older sisters with the
cooking and cleaning. Again, this was particularly common in jobber and
independent camps where the foreman or operator was likely to be the
child's father and the cook was often her mother. Boys of the same age
also often worked in their parents' camps, but boys whose parents were
not in logging could also hire on as a camp employee. Although chore
boys' work days were long and strenuous, and their pay usually much less
than that of the other camp employees, the job allowed them to learn a
great deal about the work of a lumber camp, knowledge that often helped
them land a better paying job in later years. Many chore boys were sent
to lumber camps in order to earn cash for the family; a chore boy's pay
often bought his brothers' and sisters', and even his parents' shoes,
farm tools, and other necessities. Working children of all kinds,
whether in logging camps or other places, often had to send most of
their pay directly to their parents. It should be remembered that most
rural Wisconsin children ages thirteen or fourteen during the logging
era were expected to work at a job or on the family farm full- time. Few
children completed more than eight years of schooling; families needed
their children's work, whether paid or on the family farm, to help
support the family as a whole.

As mentioned previously, most lumberjacks had homes and farms elsewhere
and spent winters working in the camps. Although logging often provided
most of the family's camp income, this seasonal work also required that
women and children take over many of the farm and community tasks that
men generally did in non logging areas. Tending livestock, maintaining
farm buildings, and doing other farm work required that women and their
families have considerable strength and stamina. Women also had to take
care of children, and sometimes dependent elders while keeping the farm
in operation; much of the care of smaller children often fell to older
siblings who were not yet large enough to help with the heavy farm
labor. In rural communities where the men were absent much of the year,
women also did much of the work needed for the community to function.
Several rural post offices in northern Oconto County were operated by
women. Mary Roblee Gillett, for example, ran the post office from her
home in the 1870s, while her husband Rodney, who had been appointed
postmaster, was absent for months at a time as he operated his camps.
Other women worked as midwives and nurses, providing essential medical
care in rural locations where a visit to the nearest doctor might
require a trip of several days. In these ways women and children made
certain that families and communities continued to function, even when
the male labor that much of the country considered essential was
virtually absent from the local setting.