How To See Eau Claire, Wisconsin In An Epic Way

 

How To See Eau Claire, Wisconsin In An Epic Way

Historic houses, a vibrant music scene, inspirational art at every corner, and endless choices of one-of-a-kind coffee shops make Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a city you must visit. You can plan your visit here but need more time to experience everything you want. 

This fun, independent city began when lumber barons learned about Northern Wisconsin’s endless supply of white pine forests. Forests and the confluence of two significant rivers created the perfect scenario for lumber barons to become filthy rich. In the late 1800s, they swooped in to grow this tiny village of fewer than one hundred people to over twenty thousand while earning the name of Sawdust City. Lumber barons brought their enterprising spirit, and supporting merchants quickly followed. 

Music Makes Eau Claire’s HeartBeat

Eau Claire’s heartbeat of independence will forever remain downtown at the confluence where the Eau Claire and Chippewa rivers join. Here, creative energy continues to flow into every part of town. Much of Eau Claire’s heartbeat originated out of its love for music. After all, music makes up the soul of a community no matter where it’s at. Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is well-known for its indie music scene, so much so that the title of Indie Music Capital of the Midwest hangs its hat here.  

Eau Claire’s indie musician, Justin Vernon from Bon Iver, is one of the boutique Oxbow Hotel’s investors. Stay in its 1940s-era modern make-up with locally made furnishings and record turntables for listening to classic vinyl. Accordingly, you can check out three classic vinyl records at a time from the library in the lobby. To find your favorites, visit Revival Records to thumb through heaps of new and used records. Listen to your newly bought records in your room at the Oxbow. You’ll never forget this unique experience.

There’s so much to love about Eau Claire, but once you understand its history, you will love it even more deeply. Eau Claire compares to a smaller Austin or Portland, but you must visit the Wisconsin Logging Museum to understand it today. There’s so much to love about Eau Claire, but once you know its history, you will love it even more deeply. Past and present, the confluence of the river remains the center of activity.

We look into where it all started at Eau Claire’s logging camps to see what life was like and how they influenced modern-day Eau Claire.  

The Legend Of Paul Bunyan In The Wisconsin Northwoods

The legend of the folk hero Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox named Babe was never understood better than at the logging camps in the Wisconsin Northwoods. Even today, his legend jumps to the forefront of our minds when we think of lumberjacks. These famous stories of oral folklore were shared between loggers in their bunkhouse during the 1800s at night for up to thirty years before anyone put them in print. They emphasized what feats he could accomplish with his gigantic stature. As each lumberjack tried to create a better story, each one became more outrageous than the last. The more outrageous each one became, the more entertaining it became for the crowd. 

How The Lumberjack Culture Began In Wisconsin

The Northwoods of Wisconsin had abundant white pine trees, many of which reached two hundred feet tall. If you drew a line west to east from La Crosse, you would find almost entirely small logging towns making up the Northwoods. Eau Claire’s Chippewa and Eau Claire rivers formed a perfect confluence to place lumber mills and logging camps.

To point out, 30,000 loggers worked in northern Wisconsin at the height of the logging empire. Lumber barons swiftly moved in to cash in on the industry. They swarmed in to buy land, build lumber mills and logging camps.  

Logging camps were only used for one season and moved to a new area the following year. They could only operate in the colder months, from November to March, because of the frozen ground. Without frozen ground moving logs was undoable. Logging crews cleared roads and poured water on them to make hard ice roads. With ice roads, logging crews used sleds to haul logs to river banks to wait for the river to thaw.

A Day In The Life Of A Lumberjack

Lumberjacks worked hard. So hard that they never saw the logging camp during the day except for their day off on Sunday. Each day they woke up at 4 am and then ate breakfast for twenty minutes in the cook shanty. Next, they walked one to three miles to the worksite.  

Lunch was served in the woods with only a thirty-minute lunch break. After their long day of work, they walked back to their logging camp at 7 pm and had dinner at 8 pm. They only had a few minutes of social time after dinner since the lights out were at 9 pm.

On Sunday, their only day off, chores like washing clothes, bathing, and mending clothes needed to be done. Even though Sundays were busy, they might get a nap in. 

Tour A Real Logging Camp At The Wisconsin Logging Museum

One of the many logging camps in Eau Claire was the Paul Bunyan Camp. A logging camp typically had between twenty-five to one hundred people. The Paul Bunyon camp included thirty-five lumberjacks.  

You can see how lumberjacks lived here by visiting the Wisconsin Logging Museum in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. This fun museum takes you back to see what lumberjack life looked like. See where lumberjacks lived and slept in the bunkhouse. Remember, the focus of a logging camp was not on hygiene but on getting work done. Lumberjacks might have bathed once a month, but it was common not to wash for the whole season. However, bed bugs, lice, fleas, and ticks were common in their beds. To top it off, they didn’t have a bunk to themselves, but two men shared each bed. Imagine the smell from the first day compared to the last day of camp.

Music Makes Up The Soul Of A Lumberjack Community

Music is the universal language of mankind

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Everyone had to get along in the bunkhouse. Sometimes, communication wasn’t easy, living in close quarters. A typical logging camp could have as many as five languages spoken. Young men from around the world came to the Wisconsin Northwoods to work. Most came from Ireland, France, Germany, Poland, Canada, Finland, and Scandinavia. In the 1890s, six out of ten lumberjacks immigrated from other countries.

They shared one common bond that made communication seamless at times. Each one brought their style of music into camp. Saturday nights were exciting since it was the only night for entertainment.  Besides, musical instruments made communicating easy.

Many lumberjacks referred to a fiddler as one of the most important people in the camp. Fiddles were mass-produced in Germany at the time, so many German immigrants brought fiddles with them. Some of the lumberjacks’ folk music resembled Irish romance stories too. Other popular instruments were the accordion, concertina, mouth harp, and handmade percussion pieces. 

On Sunday, their only day off, chores like washing clothes, bathing, and mending clothes needed to be done. Even though Sundays were busy, some might get a nap in.

Lumberjacks stacked large logs as high as possible on sleds for fun.  These Sunday loads were a light-hearted way to compete with other camps.  These loads were too heavy to pull, so they unstacked them when they finished taking photos.  You could call these bragging rights between rivalry camps.

More Wisconsin Logging Museum Exhibits

Another fun exhibit in the Wisconsin Logging Museum is the filer’s shanty, otherwise known as the dentist’s office. Each team of two sawyers had two sets of saws. One to use daily and another in the filer’s shanty for sharpening. Each saw had between 150 – 250 teeth. If the saws were not sharp, slower cuts resulted, so the filer contributed to the profit or loss of a logging camp.

Across from the filer’s shanty is the foreman’s office. He was in charge of the entire camp. The foreman’s required skill was reading and writing, mainly because he kept the books. The foreman needed a thermometer because if the temperature fell below -20 degrees, horses and oxen could not work. However, he had to hide the thermometer so the lumberjacks wouldn’t complain that the weather was too cold to work.

The Wanigan, or camp store, holds many personal items lumberjacks need. Loggers bought medical supplies, boots, clothing, and even fiddles. I enjoyed looking through the items in this exhibit.

Make sure to go inside the machine shed for a description of different jobs and equipment. You can’t miss the giant blue sprinkler on a sled. A sprinkler was filled with barrels of river water, and then water dripped through holes in the floor onto the ice road they were building. Stoves kept the water from freezing in some versions.

See The Most Critical Job In A Logging Camp

Now that you understand a logging camp better, who do you think had the most important job?

Did you guess the cook?

The cook could make or break a logging camp. They could easily impact how profitable or not a logging camp would become. Because a logging camp needed an exceptional cook, they also made more than any other job except for a foreman. 

If a cook had an excellent reputation, lumberjacks flocked to that camp. On the other hand, if a logging camp had a lousy cook, lumberjacks followed their stomachs to work at different camps. When a logging camp didn’t have enough men to fulfill the work contract, it lost money. Therefore, a good cook was critical for a profitable season; the best ones were paid accordingly.  

Logging camp cooks like to make beans so that lumberjacks could expect them on the menu at least once daily. Tea and coffee were available at every meal, but fresh fruit and vegetables were never served.

A few strict rules must be followed in the cook shanty.

• Everyone must sit in their assigned seats.

• You can have as much as you would like, but what wasn’t completely eaten would still sit on your plate for the next meal.  

• Absolutely no talking. If you were talking, then you were not eating.

• You only had twenty minutes to eat.

A Dangerous Job After A Logging Camp Closed

After trees were cut and made into logs, they were hauled to the side of the river to wait until the Spring thaw and flooding. Some of the lumberjacks would take spring jobs driving logs down the river.  

A log driver, a river rat or river pig, ran on tops of logs with spiked shoes in icy rivers. They needed agility and quick feet to stay safe. One wrong step could mean severe injury or even death.  

When a log jam occurred, it could be as high as thirty feet tall and hold back a wall of water. Sometimes log drivers used dynamite to break it loose. When dynamite blew a log jam, they were fortunate to escape without losing their lives, given that massive flooding immediately occurred.  

If a log jam was too big, it needed to remain until the following season. When this happened, no one got paid for their whole work season. Lumberjacks only received one paycheck after the season’s logs reached their final location, usually at lumber mills. Can you imagine working this hard for nothing? 

See how the small town of Breckenridge, Colorado grew because of what a sawmill could do.

See Why Classy Women Surprisingly Embraced The Simple Made Breckenridge Sawmill

How Eau Claire Became A City

The city of Eau Claire sprouted into a booming town of over twenty thousand people from its location on the confluence of two significant logging rivers. Exactly where the Chippewa and Eau Claire rivers joined, businesses took advantage of this perfect location.  

Lumber mills conveniently lined the rivers in Eau Claire. They produced anything from lumber, crates, barrels, shingles, and even shoe molds. Additionally, Eau Claire had natural inlets and an excellent oxbow lake to hold logs.

Eau Claire entrepreneurs built more than thirty lumber mills. By 1890 over seventy-five sawmills and factories made products from the lumber industry and shipped them all over the United States. Eau Claire had more lumber mills than anywhere else in the world. Thus, Eau Claire earned the nickname Sawdust City.

Like the rest of the country, the lumber industry began to crash in Eau Claire. In 1910, less than five lumber mills existed in the town, and 1929 the last one closed.

Through the years, Eau Claire’s citizens have used their independent thinking to evolve and change through each generation. You will like what you discover in this lively city.

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Fun Activities For Your Visit To Eau Claire

These activities are just a handful of fun things to do in Eau Claire. We’ll share more, so keep an eye out.

• Rock Fest

• Country Fest

• Country Jam USA

• Blue Ox

• Eaux Claires

• Jazz Festival

• Forge Fest

• Tons of live music all around town

• Pablo Center At The Confluence

• Wisconsin Logging Museum In Carson Park

Open June through September 

12-4 Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

Admission:

Adult: $8.00

Youth: $4.00

Under 5: Free

• Visit Carson Park: No visit to Eau Claire is complete without visiting Carson Park. People enjoy visiting the park for loads of outdoor activities all year. A visit to the Wisconsin Logging Museum will bring Carson Park’s rich history to life.  

“Carson Park is a direct result of lumber barons and their wealth, William Carson’s children donated the park after he passed away to the City, and now it’s a huge hub for outdoor activities and summer fun. Kayaking on Halfmoon Lake is also popular here, and the lake used to store logs, so they would have used different rafts, canoes, and batteaux to navigate that area.”

Rachel Lange – Wisconsin Logging Museum Executive Director

• Coffee shops: Maybe Eau Claire’s massive coffee scene has been passed down from the logging camps.

• Paddle and Tube Eau Claire’s rivers: Eau Claire’s rivers are perfect for paddling on the same waterways logs floated to the lumber mills. Imagine river pigs jumping between logs as you glide along the river banks. Tubing is a popular way to cool off in the hot summer months. Of course, you can stay dry and watch people tubing from downtown Phoenix Park at the confluence of rivers.  

• Sculpture Tour Throughout Downtown

• See Historic homes and buildings by touring Eau Claire’s landmarks. One important legacy of the lumber barons is the luxury they brought. Drive through Eau Claire to see some of the elaborate houses lumber barons built and lived in. We noticed more historic houses in Eau Claire than in an average city.  See the Eau Claire Landmarks booklet here.

Where To Experience Life Of A Lumberjack Near Eau Claire

Scheer’s Lumberjack Show in Hayward and Woodruff

Dells Lumberjack Show In Wisconsin Dells

Paul Bunyan’s Cook Shanty in Wisconsin Dells and Minocqua

Final Thoughts

Many people know Eau Claire for its many popular music festivals. However, everyone needs to take a closer look and plan for many more things to do. Take a look from a local perspective, and you won’t be disappointed.

Since moving to Eau Claire, we have enjoyed its fantastic parks and even played disc golf at different courses. After a visit to the famous Carson Park, we enjoy driving downtown on South Barstow Street to see Eau Claire’s artistic side.  

You must go to the Eau Claire Downtown Farmers Market and walk the Sculpture Tour. We have some of our favorites, but some have already been sold and replaced. You should also check the link to the Eau Claire Landmark booklet above. Some cool houses and buildings still exist from the lumber baron days in the 1800s.  

We could continue, but we’ll save more for other articles. Most of all, this is one terrific town, and we’re so glad to call Eau Claire home now.

Thanks for reading How To See Eau Claire, Wisconsin In An Epic Way.

Tom and Kristi

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