History: The Eau Plain Mill Settlement (1913)

Poster: Janet Schwarze

Surnames: Weeks, Clark

----Source: 1913 History of Marathon County, Wisconsin

----The Eau Plain Mill Settlement (1913)

THE EAU PLAIN MILL SETTLEMENT  

A little saw mill was built in section 13, township 26, range 5 E. by Andrew Weeks as early as 1849. who sold to his brother, John Weeks, in 1851. John Weeks enlarged the mill after circular saws were used, also run a shingle mill; both mills operated by steam as well as water until it burned in 1881, when it was not rebuilt, owing to the absence of railroad communication. For many years, like all other mills in the Wisconsin pinery, all provisions had to be brought from Stevens Point and up the Eau Plain river nine miles above its mouth, by canoes, there being no other mode of communication.  

John Weeks, nevertheless, made a success by his industry and economy; he was often elected as a member of the county board of Marathon county, and when the mill burned, he purchased the Owen Clark water power in Stevens Point, where he sawed the remaining part of his large pine holdings on the Eau Plain, which mill is still operated by his sons. Many years after the mill was located, John Weeks succeeded in getting a fine turnpike road to his mill from Dancy, the nearest railroad station on the Wisconsin Valley Railroad. He was one of the first Scandinavians arriving in the United States, as early as 1839. He died at Stevens Point on June 14, 1891.