About the Logging Camp
As you enter the Museum, stop and watch the “Northwoods Saga” video in the video center. The “Northwoods Saga” gives a short history of logging. It also shows modern logging techniques. After viewing the video, you will understand the economic and historic importance of logging in Wisconsin’s past and present.
The Forestry Museum is brimming with artifacts that bring the turn of the century camps back to life. There are tools and machinery the farm used to plant and harvest crops. Antique household appliances speak to the labor intensiveness of day to day life. Sleighs and buffalo blankets can be found next to old dugout canoes. Collections of original script and coins can be found next to the original account ledgers. Lean against a section of an ancient white pine while you study the rings marking the high points of hundreds of years of history.
Families can marvel at the tools, such as the cumbersome two man saws, cruiser equipment and stamp hammers used by the lumberjacks who struggled in the coldest winters to harvest trees for a nation that was growing and expanding westward. Framed pictures on the walls depict some of the most arduous tasks performed in the daily life of these hearty timber men. Methods used to transport logs to the railroads and rivers are also featured in the museum. Learn how draft horses managed to pull huge sleds piled thirty feet high with logs. Through the years, Wisconsin’s loggers acquired the knowledge as to how to selectively harvest the forests to harmonize the needs of nature and man.
After viewing the hard life of the lumberjack, no one will be surprised that the most important men in the logging camps were the cooks! See Paul Bunyan size cooking tools including frying pans three feet across and imagine a cook using them to prepare a lumberjack-sized breakfast of flapjacks, eggs and sausages.
And on your way out, watch a blacksmith pound and shape your very own good luck “mini” horsehoe over the forge. The Blacksmith shop is one of the original buildings at the Farm, and the Blacksmith works at the original forge.