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Beef Slough WI230 Print E-mail
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The Beef Slough was a sluggish branch of the Chippewa River that provided and excellent storage pond for the logs floated downstream by numerous logging companies. Here loggers were employed to arrange the mixed-up logs into orderly rafts to be towed by steamboats to sawmills down the Mississippi.

The Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire sawmills felt threatened when the Beef Slough Manufacturing, Booming, Log Driving and Transportation Company was organized near here in 1867. Camp No. 1 built offices, a railroad depot, post office, church and dormitories to house 600 men during the rafting season.

The competition between the Eau Claire and Beef Slough interests developed into a brief dispute in 1868, sometimes calles the "Beef Slough War." The most important result of the "war" was the earrival on the scene of Frederick Weyerhaeuser, whose Mississippi Logging Company brought skilled management and seemingly unlimited capital into the picture and changed the logging operations on the chippewa from locally-operated activities into a major interstate industry.


Erected 1976

Hwy 35, 0.5 mi. N of Alma, Buffalo County Wisconsin

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