The recording of history is a newspaperman’s job at the time of the events chronicled. Writing historical articles or books is essentially a rearrangement of the facts as they were reported at the time according to the importance assigned to them by later judgement. The historian is actually a plagiarist since he has culled his facts from other sources. His excuse for existance is that he sorts out what he thinks might interest a new reader, puts it in his own words and, too often, claims credit for furnishing the original information. The chaff he leaves for future times and historians.
The Town of Barnes
By: Eldon Marples
Straddled along the line between Douglas and Bayfield counties near their southern end are two groups of lakes which are unique. each in their way, in our forested wonderland. The Eau Claire chain lies in the trough along the northern base of the Minong Copper Range and heads the river of that name which flows west ward across the sandy plateau to join the St. Croix at Gordon. The second group, once known as the Whitehead Lakes, lies about five miles to the north in the pitted outwash plains of the Superior lobe of the Wisconsin glaciation and is landlocked, each lake in a giant pothole created when huge blocks of ice melted away in postglacial times, leaving as ridges the sand that had surrounded them.
These lakes were once the home of several bands of free-living Chippewa Indians who found unlimited fish in the waters, game in the forest, blueberries in the sand barrens, and maple sugar from the sugarbush on the mountains to sweeten them. These people resisted the efforts to move them onto reservations and stayed on among the loggers and settlers, even after their land was pre-empted and sold. One group had their cabins on the Lower lake at Pine Point and the other was between Bony and Middle lakes. The little "spirit houses" in their graveyard at the north end of Middle lake have disintegrated and few remember today where the graves are.
The first road into the area was the St. Croix Trail, sometimes called the Military Road or the St. Croix-Bayfield mail route. It was cut through before 1850 to give the Chequamegon Bay cities contact overland with the central government. It probably followed old trails used by the ancient tribes for trade or war. The Trail, only a trace in the wilderness, skirted the south banks of Black Fox and Paradise lakes and the north side of Sand, Loon, Breakfast and Island lakes. There was a camping place and stage depot at Island Lake which was used by night-bound travelers. The Trail was mostly abandoned by 1871 when railroads were put through but it can be traced on foot - I have hiked thirty miles of it since 1935.
Loggers pushed up the Eau Claire before the Civil War, dropping the pine into the river and driving it down to Stillwater, paying stump age only when noticed by government agents. The railroads were granted every odd section along their lines for development purposes and the large timber interests fought over the best of what remained, leaving the poorer land for the homesteaders.
The forest around the lakes was mostly jackpine with thin stands of Norway and scattered white pine along the shores and on ridges of better soil. The jackpine was considered worthless and ignored, or burned if in the way. The white pine, which floated well, was soon stripped and the Norway followed. The loggers left little from their operations but a few dams, abandoned sets of camp buildings and their toteroads.
The lumbermen built a toteroad from Gordon along the Ounce and below the Eau Claire lakes to Drummond. Perhaps they had the help of the miners who were prospecting for copper beside it. Another road was put through on the north side of the Eau Claire river to Middle lake with a branch across the Chase dam at the foot of Lower lake to connect with the Drummond Road.
George Sardis Barnes, the first settler, walked in to his homestead midway between the groups of lakes in 1888, "with a plow on his shoulder and a bulldog at his heels," according to his son, Stanley Barnes. He became a farmer, logger and postmaster, and kept the first hotel, saloon and store in the area. The first post office was in his store at the center of Section 28 and was called "Anita" after his daughter. The name was changed to Barnes in 1905 and mail was distributed from here until after his death in 1923. Part of the central building remains and the concrete porch is still sound. He became the "father" of the Town of Barnes in 1905 after he used the proceeds of the sale of two colts to go to Madison and petition the legislature to set off the township.
Settlement in the Barnes area had been slow until the turn of the century when depressed economic conditions caused many people to seek cheap land for subsistence farming. The 1906 platbook showed many settlers in the neighborhood, some of them being able to survive for several years on the sandy soil. In contrast to the settlement by farmers, there were few "summer people" on the lakes in the early days. One who found the area to his liking was Dr. Wilbur C. Gray of Chicago who came to Island Lake in 1886 and established a summer camp on its island. It was later owned by the family of Cyrus McCormick. The tale of the discovery and settlement of this sylvan paradise is delightfully told in the book, St. Croix Trail Country by William Gray Purcell, Dr. Gray's grandson, who spent his youthful summers there. This book should be read by everyone who is interested in our local history as it tells the story so well of what life was like during the nineties in the back-country. The original log buildings are there and though the surrounding terrain has been somewhat altered, this historic site is well worth seeing.
Resorting did not come early to this lake country. The first resort was probably at the inlet on Middle lake. Claude E. Sherman
owned this land before 1906 and he was at this place for many years, though the resort may have been operated by others. When I stayed there in 1922 with my employer, Thomas McClaine (we were surveying and "landlooking" the township - I have the notebook of that trip), there were several other guests. L.D. Pease later operated a small resort on the south end of Upper lake. Walter Fowler settled on Pine Point in 1901 beside the Indian village (now the first fairway of the golf course) and his son, Chick, still operates the resort he later built.
The names of most of the lakes in the two groups are taken from some physical feature of each, such as shape, type of bottom or shore or indigenous flora and fauna. The early French travelers called the clear stream they found entering the St. Croix, Eau Claire, or clear water. Island lake had an island and was titled "Eye" lake on some maps. Bony lake was named for Bonei Lumbar, a French-Indian inhabitant who was murdered here in 1907.
