Before Minneapolis was known for its lakes or its arts scene, it was a sawmill town. Mills lining the Mississippi at St. Anthony Falls turned the white pine of northern Minnesota into the building material for a growing region. This is the story of how that industry rose and faded, and why its legacy still interests anyone working with reclaimed lumber in the Twin Cities.
The White Pine Frontier
The story begins with Minnesota's northern forests. The upper Mississippi watershed held vast stands of white pine, one of the most valuable timber resources on the continent. White pine was ideal construction lumber: light, easy to work, and available in large clear boards.
Settlers recognized the potential early. St. Anthony Falls, the only major waterfall on the Mississippi, offered power to drive saws, and by the middle of the 1800s sawmills were operating there as the race to harvest Minnesota's pine got underway.
The geography suited the trade. Logging crews felled trees in the northern forests during winter, moved logs over snow and ice to the rivers, and floated them downstream when the spring thaw swelled the waterways. The falls provided power for the mills, and the growing towns and farms of the region provided the market.
A Lumber Center on the Mississippi
The later decades of the 1800s were the high point of Minneapolis lumber. Sawmills crowded the riverfront, employed large numbers of workers, and sent lumber out across the Upper Midwest and the plains as railroads extended the city's reach.
The industry produced considerable wealth. T.B. Walker built a fortune in lumber, and his art collection became the basis of the Walker Art Center. Other leading Minneapolis families, including the Washburns and Pillsburys, are remembered above all for flour milling, the other great industry at the falls. Together, lumber and flour gave the city its early economic identity.
Logs filled the river above the falls in season, and the sound of saws and the smell of fresh-cut pine must have been part of daily life near the riverfront.
The Great Log Drives
One of the most dramatic parts of the lumber era was the spring log drive. As ice melted on the upper Mississippi and tributaries such as the Rum River, logs stockpiled through the winter were sent downstream toward the mills.
Log drives were dangerous, grueling work. Rivermen rode the logs through rapids and logjams, using peaveys and pike poles to keep the timber moving. Their culture became part of the folklore of the north woods, and the tall tales of Paul Bunyan are forever tied to the lumber camps of the upper Great Lakes region.
Railroads gradually took over much of the work of moving logs, and as the forests were cut, the great drives came to an end.
The Decline
The industry contained the seeds of its own decline. Cutting removed whole stands of old-growth pine with little thought for regrowth. As the accessible forests were exhausted around the turn of the twentieth century, logging moved farther north and the Minneapolis mills closed in the early decades of the century.
But the lumber did not disappear. The wood that left those mills was built into houses, barns, warehouses, factories, churches, and commercial buildings across Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. Much of it is still out there, part of the built environment.
The Legacy in Old Buildings
When an old Twin Cities building comes down or is renovated, the framing may be old-growth softwood from the white pine era or timber brought in by rail, such as Douglas fir or southern longleaf pine. It is rarely possible to say which mill a given board came from, but the age of the wood is often plain to see.
Old-growth trees grew slowly in dense stands, producing wood with tight growth rings that is hard to find in modern timber. That is a large part of why this material still attracts woodworkers and builders.
There is an irony here: the harvesting that stripped Minnesota's forests also left behind a stock of old wood that can be used again as reclaimed building material.
The Reclaimed Lumber Renaissance
Today, as older buildings are renovated or redeveloped, old-growth timber inside them can become available for salvage. Barn deconstruction, warehouse conversions, and renovations that strip out original lumber all create opportunities to save material that cannot be replicated.
Where the old lumber trade cut and moved on, reuse keeps what already exists in service. Reusing a beam avoids cutting and milling a new one, and wood stores carbon while it stays in use. Our sustainability page explains more.
Choosing a reclaimed floor or salvaged beams is a practical choice, and it also connects a project to the building history of the region.
Continuing the Story
The sawmills at St. Anthony Falls turned the northern forests into the towns and farms of a region, and some of that wood still stands in the structures around us.
If you are interested in old wood for your own project, browse products or request a quote and we will pass your request to partner suppliers in the Twin Cities metro.