LUMBER INDUSTRY

LUMBER INDUSTRY. Utilizing its ideal location on the MISSISSIPPI RIVER, Dubuque became a hub of lumbering activity. The first development took place in 1866 with the establishment of a retail business by William Harrison DAY. This small company, the Robb and Day Retail Plant, grew with the city and, as the Ingram, Kennedy and Day Company, opened a sawmill in 1876 that eventually became the lumber industry titan, STANDARD LUMBER COMPANY.

Lumber companies like Standard depended on a steady supply of timber from forests of Wisconsin. LOG RAFTS were soon seen floating with the current under the watchful eye of expert lumbermen.

In its earliest days, the lumber industry in Dubuque saw more planing and cutting mills than lumber companies. The Standard Lumber Company was the oldest. At least six other companies rafted logs. M. H. Moore established Moore's Saw Mill that incorporated under the name of the [[DUBUQUE LUMBER COMPANY]. Other firms included the Lambert and Reed Company, Randall and Pelan, Langworthy Brothers, and Burch and Babcock. "Woodenware" manufactured from rafted logs was made by the Charley Clark Mill, later renamed the LESURE LUMBER COMPANY. Destroyed by fire in 1894, the company emerged as the RUMPF-FRUDDEN LUMBER COMPANY and later the Engler-Frudden Lumber Company. An explosion in 1884 ended the existence of the Key City Planing Mill. A small mill called Patch and Wait was located at Ninth and Washington.

As logging proved expensive, companies adopted the practice of having the timber sawed in the forest and shipped to Dubuque as planks. A cutting mill, the C.W. Robinson Lumber Company, which did not raft logs, was established on West Main between First and Locust STREETS. In 1888 Peter J. SEIPPEL and Joseph A. MEUSER left Robinson's employ and founded the MEUSER-SEIPPEL LUMBER COMPANY. Another employee of Robinson left and began the SVENDSON & OTT LUMBER COMPANY. This company was later the target of a merger that led to the establishment of the OTT-MEUSER LUMBER COMPANY. Meuser and Seippel dissolved their partnership in 1897, and Seippel founded his own company. The Seippel Lumber Company was incorporated in 1906. Seippel's company and the Meuser company merged in 1907 after the retirement of J. J. Ott.

The last raft of sawed lumber was received by the P. J. Seippel Company in 1912. After that date, railroads carried most lumber shipments. Leaders in the early lumber industry included the KNAPP-STOUT LUMBER COMPANY, the Standard Lumber Company, and the DUBUQUE LUMBER COMPANY. Mergers and consolidations affected other lumberyards including the Weston Birch Company, Svendon-Ott Company, Meuser-Seippel Lumber Company, FRUDDEN LUMBER COMPANY, Noah Adams Lumber Company, Lesure Lumber Company, Rumpf-Frudden Lumber Company, Ott Meuser Lumber Company, P. J. Seippel Lumber Company, Blocklinger Lumber Company, C. W. Chapman Lumber Company, Meuser Brothers Lumber Company, SPAHN AND ROSE LUMBER COMPANY, PYRAMID LUMBER COMPANY, MIDWEST LUMBER COMPANY, and C. W. Robinson Lumber Company.

Disastrous FIRES led to the decline in Dubuque's lumber industry. The first fire to affect Dubuque was the 1894 inferno near Henckley, Minnesota, which destroyed a reserve of timber owned by the Standard Lumber Company. Local fires were no less destructive. A decline by 1910 in the amount of lumber available from northern forests due to over cutting led to the further decline of the industry in Dubuque and the Mississippi Valley.