Wood Harvesting/Processing
With the construction of the Northern Pacific railroad, saw mills were established at water crossings of the great railroad. Large mills were established at the Gull river crossing and later at the Brainerd crossing.
These mills were fed by narrow gauge logging roads that ran into the forests and were used to bring the logs to landings. Landings, usually located on protected bays, were sometimes connected to larger lake systems via dikes and canals.
At landings, lumber was bunched or "boomed" together in order to make a manageable float to downstream mills.
With the construction of a
large dam and the expansion of Brainerd centered rails, Brainerd site
soon became favored as a location for a large wood processing operation.
These could now be fed
by the rapidly expanding network of narrow and standard guage lumber railroads
and were already connected to major national markets via the Northern
Pacific.
The Gull river mill soon moved its operations to Brainerd around the mid 1890’s.
At around this time a paper mill was also established in order to take advantage
of the new power source. This mill, which initially produced only pulp for
processing elsewhere, was soon outfitted to be an integrated pulp and newsprint mill.
It would go on to be one of Brainerd's most significant
employers. Rails made Brainerd the center for wood milling in the region.
