More than a century ago, the rivers of Western Wisconsin were filled with logs, bumping and banging their way downstream from sawmills throughout the area. Just about every person living in the small Dunn County Town of Downsville has an ancestor who worked with lumber.

In this morning's Wandering Wisconsin segment, Wisconsin Journal's Mary Rinzel shows us around the Empire in the Pines Lumber Museum.

Frank Kennett, Museum Curator, says:

It's operated by the Dunn County Historical Society. It involves lumberjacking and sandstone quarrying which were two key industries in downsville.

People are interested in the lumberjacking especially. This is the historic age and there are certainly jobs you want to have-- railroad worker, lumberjack, cowboy... People are interested in the lumber era, and then also the sandstone quarry. The quarry has a very colorful past too.

The story behind the bansaw in Downsville is that one broke and wrapped itself around a man working with it and he escaped without a scratch, which was really something.

There's stories connected with the artifacts we have and that makes it all more interesting.

I want to say something about this area. This is dead man's corner and this was the cutting shed at Downsville Cut Stone Company. Many of the cutters that worked in there making the various fancy work died of silicosis. They literally breathed in sandstone dust andy their lungs turned to stone and they died. One after another every cutter in dead man's corner died. The last man in the area in Tony Wolf. He's 94 and he survived. He was too tough and too ornery to go down.

This is set up as a logging camp. There's a couple rooms.

So these are our muzzle-loading bunks. As a lumberjack, you would sleep in a place like this. The bench in front is called the Deacon's Bench. That's the only chairs they had. They had no other place to sit.

This is a storage area called a dingle. They would keep the various pieced of equipment in a place like this. They would also have firewood and food supplies.

This is the area where they would have their meal. There was no talking allowed at meal time. They want you to eat up and get out.

This is a ginny pole. It's the only one in existence still. It was invented by a steam boat captain and it was used to get steam boats off of the sandbars in the Chippewa River.

This is a mulley saw. It's from the 1850's and it moved relatively slowly. There are paintings of guys on the log playing cards and waiting for the blade to get to them.

This is how people made their living. It's part of the past of many and many people come in all the time and say 'my granddad worked in the quarry'. It's the historical society's job ot preserve the history of the past so this is a part of what we do."
There is a lot to see in and around the one-room museum, including an old jail and post office! It's open Friday, Saturday and Sunday from noon until five from June until October. It has to close up for the winter-- the historic building didn't come with heat!