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The Morgan Falls & Little Trinity Pulp &
Timber Company
By: Peter Kirchhoff
The spring of 1953 is showing reasonable promise of
being another profitable season for the MF<, a small logging company
located in the northern reaches of upper Wisconsin. Snow melt began
early this year due to an unseasonably warm winter, and although the
runoff has the banks of the local creeks and rivers taxed, flooding has
not been an issue thus far. The MF< track gang had made great strides
in getting the end of the line up past the area destined to become
Logging Camp #7 before the snow season began last fall, putting a
temporary end to the cutting, and the word from the home office now is
that they are to continue going on toward the top so that when this new
area runs out, the loggers can continue moving further up. Cutting has
been going well so far this year, and with the promise of another new
area of McGill’s Mountain soon to be opened up to the logging crews for
harvesting, the gross number of felled trees for this year could reach
record numbers.
This new found prosperity
has the stock holders in good spirits and their purse strings a little
looser in respect to the sums they are willing to invest in more, and
newer equipment destined for placement in Camp #7. As the areas around
Camps #5 & #6 become totally played out, anything in good repair will
naturally be moved up the line, but as always, some pieces will be left
behind as they are deemed no longer serviceable, and will be brought
back down to Big Stump, or Saw Pit for repair. Once the repairs are
completed, up the hill they will go and be put back into service. The
MF< keeps a pretty close eye on its equipment and maintenance
expenses, and unless a piece of machinery is totally worn out and beyond
reclamation, one can expect to see it back to work in short order.
Looking back into the
history of the MF<, life had not always been so rosy for the little
logging road however, and in the many years gone by, it too had its
share of hard times. Back in 1892, when Robert McCord and Richard
Kirchhoff, then employees of the Port Arthur Saw Mill, first struck out
to start their own business, the Morgan Falls & Little Trinity Pulp and
Timber Company, and to purchase the deed to a 1000 acre parcel of
wilderness just north of Taylor’s Marsh, they had all they could do to
raise the $200.00 purchase price the state was asking. Exhausting the
rest of their savings, and with a little help from relatives, they were
able to buy the land and the equipment that was left from a previous
attempt at clearing the countryside of timber by the Hamilton brothers,
located between Taylor’s Marsh to the north and south to Sawpit
Junction. There wasn’t much in the way of used equipment, but enough to
set up a rudimentary logging operation. More importantly, it gave them
access to the Sawpit and Port Arthur area and “right of passage” through
to the mill. They used an ingenious cable system to gently lower the
loaded cars down the hill, and a team of horses to pull the cars the
rest of the way, making use of the old, but serviceable narrow gauge
track left behind by the previous tenants.
In the
beginning, there was little left in the coffers to finance the start up
of their fledgling logging venture, and they had to depend on the
hand-me-downs from other, less successful, now defunct harvesting
operations from around the local area. Frugality was the creed in the
early days, and the combination of watching their expenditures, handling
all phases of the operation themselves, and lots of
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