Making of a Lumber Capital

Step aboard the trolley for this deeply educational history tour, visiting important landmarks that made Eau Claire, and the region, the nation’s lumber epicenter in the 1880s and 1890s.

The tour takes you to several places along the Chippewa River, which was the workhorse that drove the area’s lumber production. We’ll visit Hobbs Landing and hear the ingenuis way the early lumbermen steered their logs into nearby Half Moon Lake. Weaving our way through downtown, we’ll take you where the city’s first sawmill was located along the Eau Claire River, and after that enjoy some of the best views in the city, while stretching your legs for a short walk on our historic High Bridge. The tour finishes up at Carson Park, where you will discover what it was like to be a lumberjack in northern Wisconsin, cutting down the mighty white pine that made this area the nations lumber capital.

Photos courtesy of the Chippewa Valley Museum, a partner who helped make this tour possible.