This pen-etching was made from an old photograph of a Cummer and Diggins logging train on its way back to the mills in Cadillac, way back in the 90's. Pen sketch by Fred H. Lamb

Owing to the fact that in those days all inland transportation and travel was by wagon and stage coach, settlements remote from the lake shore were for many years very few and were usually found along such rivers as were navigable, and these grew very slowly. During the years 1836 and 1837, the United State surveyors had reached the territory now known as Wexford county, in their preliminary or township line survey, but it was not until the year 1840 that a name was given. The first name to this territory was Kautawaubet, supposed to have been an Indian name, but it was afterwards discovered that the name had no particular significance, and in 1843 the name was changed to Wexford.

In the closing day of 1870, the "iron horse" made its first appearance in Wexford County, the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad having completed its line as far Little Clam Lake, some six miles northward from the southern boundary of the county. The original survey contemplated having the line pass between Big Clam Lake and Little Clam Lake, but through the efforts of George A. Mitchell, who had purchased quite a large tract of pine timber on the east shore of the little lake, and whose sagacious eye foresaw the advantages of having mills at the eastern end of a body of water where the prevailing westerly winds would very materially assist in floating timber to them, the railroad company was induced to swing eastward from its original survey and pass around the east end of the lake. The advantages that have resulted from this change can hardly be realized by one not familiar with lumbering operation, but it is not too much to say that there would have been no city of Cadillac in Wexford County if the railroad had passed, as first intended, between the lakes.

The year 1872 witnessed the inauguration of the stupendous lumbering operation, which had at last swept away nearly the last vestige of the large tracts of pine timber which the county then possessed. In addition to the heavy operations along the Manistee River, the new village of Clam Lake was a genuine lumbering town. As early as June 1872, there had been two sawmills put in operation, each with a capacity of twenty-five thousand feet per day, and a few months later two others were started with a capacity of forty and sixty thousand feet per day, respectively. These four mills manufactured about four million feet of lumber per month, or nearly fifty million per year.

If one stops for a moment to contemplate the work of these mills, and those built soon afterward at Haring, Long Lake, Bond's Mills, McCoy's Siding, and on the shores of Clam Lake, and their constant operation for ten, fifteen years each, he can get some idea of the vast wealth in the pine forests in Wexford County at that early day.

The first sawmill was built by a Mr. Yale in the fall of 1871, the site being nearly the same as that now occupied by what is designated as Cobbs and Mitchell's little mill. It would be impossible to give in detail the vast lumbering operations that have been built up and still largely sustain the thriving city by the lake. For nearly thirty-two years, summer and winter, and many times day and night, has the work gone on. Some idea may be formed of the vast proportions of this business from a present description of some of the mills. For years the Cummer interest ran two mills, cutting from two hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand feet of lumber per day. Two years ago one of these mills ceased doing business, for the reason that the pine timber had become exhausted. The other mill runs on hardwood and hemlock, cutting about sixty thousand feet of the former or one hundred and thirty feet of the latter per day.

This illustration shows how the Cummer and Diggins Lumber Company of Cadillac at that time initially moved the huge hardwood logs from where they were felled to either train or water transport to the mills in Cadillac. Pen sketch by Fred H. Lamb

Cobbs & Mitchell have two sawmills with a capacity of about thirty-five thousand feet of lumber per day, nearly all of which is hemlock and maple. Wilcox Brothers have a sawmill capable of cutting some twenty-five thousand feet per day.

Last year the firm of Williams Brothers built a large last-block factory, with a sawmill attachment. The last-block business consumes about two hundred thousand feet of maple timber per year, while their sawmill will cut forty thousand feet of lumber per day. Mitchell Brothers have a handle factory which requires about two million feet of beech and maple timber per annum. The Oviat Veneer Works require two million feet of timber per annum to supply their plant. They use beech, birch, maple, basswood, ash, oak, cherry and elm timber. The Cadillac Tie & Shingle Company has a plant with a sawmill attachment capable of turning outtwenty thousand feet of lumber and forty thousand shingles per day."