In 1882
MENOMONIE INCORPORATED
AS A CITY
Menomonie is located in the Red Cedar Valley of northwestern Wisconsin in Dunn County.
The area was already heavily populated with Sioux Indians when
French fur traders began their exploration of northwestern Wisconsin in the late 18th century.
In 1788, Jean Baptiste Rennault set up the first trading post near present-day Menomonie.
The four families lived in Menomonie in 1848
Captain William Wilson family
Mr. and Mrs. Lorenzo Bullard
John Vail, one of the workmen, and his wife
Mr. and Mrs. Jason Ball
Logging was very important in the 1800's, and the years before, all over the world. Logging employed thousands of people to help make houses and other buildings for everyone as the central part of the United States developed.
Menomonie became a huge trading site for the Knapp, Stout and Company's mill.The mill employed over 2,000 people from Menomonie and other small area towns.By the 1870's, the company had grown to become the largest lumbering operation in the world. In 1878 they had control of the Red Cedar Valley. Other communities helped the company by putting up dams around the company dams. Cities involved in helping were Cedar Falls, Downsville, Prairie Farm, and others.
The rivers that the company used are the Mississippi, Red Cedar, and Chippewa River. They sent their lumber as far south as St. Louis. They used some steamboats,
to guide rafts down the river so that they wouldn't lose a lot of the lumber.
Between the 1870's and the late 1890's the company processed approximately 85 million board feet of lumber. They had three different offices on the Mississippi River. The location of the offices were Dubuque, Iowa, Read's Landing, Minnesota, and St. Louis, Missouri. Around the 1900's Knapp, Stout and Company moved their production line further south to Arkansas and Missouri. The main reason for their move was that the logging in earlier times in Wisconsin, had considerably diminished the forest, and the new area had better forests.
By the 1900s, the company had largely depleted its lumber supply; it closed many of its camps and dissolved early in the 20th century.
The company sent out its last shipment of lumber on August 12, 1901
The Knapp, Stout, & Company
