Lumbering on the Huron Shore

Lumbermen swarmed into this area during the latter half of the 1800s, attracted by some of the finest pine forests in North America. From Tawas City, where the first sawmill was built in 1854, north to Alpena, about twelve billion board feet of timber were cut between 1866 and 1896. Each spring the Au Sable, the Thunder Bay, and the other rivers of the region were filled with logs being driven to the sawmills. To the lake ports lumber boats came in the summer to carry the lumber away to help build the nation.