The paddlewheel steamboat "J. B. Bassett" was a Mississippi "Wanagun" which was a cook boat that followed the log drives. Here the Bassett is moored at the landing on the Rum River.
Postcard with photo of lumber camp and John Wolcott, Henry Campbell, Glen Campbell, Jack Wolcott, and Lloyd Wolcott, with message from Jack Wolcott to Mrs. J. W. Chace, St. Clair, Minnesota, postmarked Kelliher, Minnesota, Beltrami County
Winton's first lumber mill. It started as the Knox Lumber Company but was renamed after its sale. Like Swallow and Hopkins, it, too, closed in the 1920s.
At the boom, floating timbers chained between piers caught and contained logs for sorting and measuring and rigging into rafts. At one time, the Stillwater boom extended a distance of 9 miles and employed 400 men to sort, scale and raft timber.
View of North Meridian Street in Belle Plaine in February 1904. Two men on logs on sled pulled by two horses. The driver might be Johnny Latzke or Jack Melchior.
These boats were towed upstream to the furthest point of the logging operation and then floated downstream as the timber crews worked the logs down the river. This practice kept the bunkhouse and cook shanties close to where the men were working.