Wisconsin Central Railroad wooden trestle and sawmill log dam on the Jump River
A little over a century ago, the government granted the Wisconsin Central Railroad a 20-mile-wide strip of every odd-numbered section of land between Stevens Point and Ashland. It was priced at $1.25 an acre and was to be used for a railroad connecting the northern and southern sections of the state. Except for its wealth of standing virgin pine, land in northern Wisconsin was considered worthless. Still, the government raised the price of the remaining land to $2.50 per acre.
The Wisconsin Central had built a railroad from Menasha to Stevens Point, but its ultimate aim was to complete the line to Superior, where the Great Lakes played such an important role in the transportation of ore.
In 1872, work on the proposed railroad began and rails were laid from Stevens Point to Colby. In 1873, they were extended to Worcester, a distance of 101 miles from Stevens Point. Work on the railroad extending south from Ashland had begun but was temporarily brought to a stand-still by the panic of 1873. It was completed in 1876.
Mr. Sackett, in his History of Price County, writes about the laying of the rails, "Sixty-three miles in all, running from Menasha to Stevens point, being completed in one-hundred twenty days with the aid of 2,000 men, 600 horses, 100 yokes of oxen."
The tracks were made of wood with only a steel railing in the center and often secured with wooden pegs. But wooden or otherwise, they were a boom to progress and an instrumental factor in the formation of new settlements. Later they brought an influx of European immigrants, in the Prentice area mainly Germans and Scandinavians, also French Canadians. Many of these people took advantage of the Homestead Act, acquired a parcel of land, built a log cabin, cleared enough land for a garden, bought a cow or hog plus a few chickens, and somehow or other managed to eke out a living. Others, with a mind for business, established boarding houses. The railroad also brought in loggers to whom the rich woodlands spilled opportunity.
There were difficulties. Tree stumps presented problems in the clearing of land. Removal had to be accomplished entirely by horsepower, a laborious process. Then, around the turn of the century, a powerful substance called dynamite came into being and was made available for use. It was a mixture of nitroglycerin soaked in some absorbent, such as wood pulp or sodium nitrate. It was first produced by Alfred Noble in 1867. Dynamite usage in the clearing of land for farms, roads, and railways was a gigantic step forward.
For a time, the Wisconsin Central Railroad terminal, generally known as "101," was a lively little town. It had received its official name of Worcester from a city in Massachusetts. There were high expectations that "101," too, would someday become a city. There were mills and work for more mills as dense woodland separated Worcester from its nearest neighbor to the south, Ogema, in 1875. This almost impenetrable wilderness was broken only by the rails of the Wisconsin Central.
Reprinted from the Prentice History Walk with encouragement from Dale Heikkinen
This marker is #1 on the History Walk Map.