The Morgan Lumber Company

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     The sawmill contained one carriage operated by steam, and one Resaw machine used to cut timbers after they were squared and then cut into dimensional lumber.

    One edger machine and one trimmer machine and a slasher were used to cut the slabs into four-feet lengths.  Some of the better slabs were run through again to make laths, so nothing was wasted.

    The mill was operated by line shafts and belts and powered by one huge steam engine.

    There were three boilers...the one boiler was used as a spare in case of a break down of the other two.  All the boilers were fueled by scrap wood from the mill.

Shingle Mill

     There was a big demand for shingles at the turn of the century.  The shingle bolts were cut into 18 inch lengths.  The round blocks of wood were cut into halves and quarters by a manually operated machine called a "kneebolter".  From there it went to the shingle weavers.

     Their machines were like a cabbage cutter.  They were circular saws about 36 inches in diameter and ran horizontal.  The shingle weaver operator placed the wood blocks flat into a box-like carriage which traveled back and forth about 70 times a minutes.  The raw cut shingles dropped into a chute to the men called the "knot sawyers."

     They had real small saws about two inches in diameter.  Their job was to cut out the rotten spots and cut the shingles into various dimensions.  The shingles were then graded, packaged, and sold according to grade.

     The logging operation of the Morgan Lumber and Cedar Company's goal was to have eight million feet of hardwood logs on the landing in the spring, not counting the soft woods, which was also in a considerable amount.  There was also an estimated 15,000 cords of pulp wood and thousands of cedar posts, along with poles that were anywhere from 20 to 40 feet in length.  All this was shipped out via the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad.

Planing Mill

     The lumber was air dried in the yards.  A considerable amount of it was processed in the planing mill.  The mill was equipped to process any dimensional lumber such as ship-lap, drop siding, or whatever was on order.  This was all shipped out via the Chicago Northwestern Railroad to various destinations.

 The Felch Railroad Line

     The Chicago Northwestern Railroad was called "The Felch Line" serving this area and it hauled all the lumber and various articles from the mill and brought in supplies as well.  The one train served as both freight and passenger trains.  At least one logging train came in daily at the peak of the shipping season.  And very often a "special" logging train was sent in to take care of the excess timber hauling.