Preparations for the Wilds of Wisconsin.
In the city of Detroit, early in June, 1871, was gathered a group of
four veteran woodsmen of the lumbermen's craft, and two raw recruits,
one, a student fresh from his father's law office in Bay City, and the
other, myself, whose frontier experiences were yet to be gained.
A contract, by William S. Patrick of Bay City, the principal of this
group, had been made with Henry W. Sage, of Brooklyn, New York, to
select and to secure by purchase from the United States and from the
state of Wisconsin, valuable pine lands believed to be located in the
wilds of northern Wisconsin. Tents, blankets, axes, extra clothing,
cooking utensils, compasses, and other surveying implements were
ordered, and soon the party was ready for the start.
At that time no passable roads penetrated the northern woods of
Wisconsin from the south. The country to be examined for available pine
lands at the commencement of our work was tributary to the head waters
of the Flambeau River. To reach this point in the forest it was thought
best to enter the woods from the south shore of Lake Superior. Also, the
United States land office controlling a part of this territory, was
located at Bayfield, Wisconsin, and at that office must be selected such
township plats as would be needed in the examining of lands in that
portion of the Bayfield Land District.
The quickest line of transit at that date was by railroad to Chicago,
and thence to St. Paul over the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway,
crossing the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to
McGregor, Iowa, and thence north to St. Paul. There was no other
railroad then completed from Chicago to St. Paul. The only railroad from
St. Paul to Lake Superior was the St. Paul and Duluth. From Duluth,
passage was taken by steamer to Bayfield. Township plats were here
obtained from the government land office. Provisions of pork, flour,
beans, coffee, rice, sugar, baking powder, dried apples, pepper and
salt, tobacco, etc., for one month's living in the woods for nine men,
were bought and put into cloth sacks. Our original number of six men was
here augmented by three half-breed Indians of the Bad River Indian
Reservation, who were hired as packers and guides over a trail to be
followed to the Flambeau Indian Reservation. A Lake Superior fisherman
was then engaged to take the party and its outfit in his sailing boat
from Bayfield to the mouth of Montreal River, which is the boundary
between Wisconsin and Michigan. The distance was about thirty-five
miles.
[Illustration: W. S. Patrick]