NEGAUNEE — The Chicago and Northwestern Railroad company running between Escanaba and Negaunee iron mines, built a saw mill near their line by the east end of Forsyth Lake (Little Lake) in 1868.

The railroad people operated this mill for a short time and then sold it to the firm of Harlman, Connolly & Company. They opened a lumber yard in Negaunee and operated the Forsyth Lake mill until 1874.

It was then purchased by Isaac Johnson. Isaac Johnson operated the mill for some years, and during this time he renamed Forsyth Lake to Little Lake. He then built a small steam powered sawmill in Negaunee in early 1879. Johnson continued to operate both mills for a time and his Little Lake mill supplied timber for a new ore dock being built in Escanaba by the C&NW Railroad.

Johnson decided to build a new steam powered mill on Teal Lake in Negaunee and in the spring of 1881 construction was started on a blacksmith shop, boarding house, and other buildings. By August, these were completed, the sawmill machinery delivered to the site and the sawmill building was finished.

With Johnson’s move to Negaunee, the Little Lake mill went into the hands of Martin Remille. In anticipation of the new mill, Johnson had a huge raft of logs waiting in Teal Lake. The mill was tested and worked well, but a short time later an accident occurred that fractured the skull of T.C. Bellstrom, the head sawyer and the mill was temporarily stopped. Isaac Johnson died in 1883 at the age of 46 but the mill operations continued for the Johnson estate.

Through the remaining years the Teal Lake mill was known as the Johnson Mill. William J. Neely, of Negaunee and Thomas Williamson of Oshkosh, Wisconsin purchased the mill from the Johnson estate in 1887 for $11,500.

Included in the sale were horses, wagons, lumber, banked logs and timber lands. That same winter three lumber camps were built north of Teal Lake where many men were employed cutting pine logs which were hauled and banked at the lake, Each spring the banked logs were rolled into Teal Lake and floated down to the mill where they were enclosed in a large boom.

Here they waited for their turn at the saw. In modern mills of that day, the logs were drawn up into the mill from the water by an endless chain, but in Johnson’s old mill, up to the day it cut its last board, the chain hoist was used to raise one log at a time, a time consuming practice.

John Johnson, surviving brother of Isaac and long time employee of the sawmill firm died in 1889 at the age of 42. An accident occurred at the mill in 1891 caused havoc to the building and machinery.

A shaft containing three large wheels which were belted to the saw on the upper floor, broke and a series of mishaps knocked out the entire second floor. Wheels were broken, foundations were loosened and machinery was scattered in every direction. The following month a boom of logs near the mill broke and the wind scattered them along the length of the shore.

From then on the logs were hauled to the mill, not rafted across the lake. Logs were received from Gauthiers camps on the C&NW Railroad by rail and stockpiled near the Cambria location. The saws were being run to capacity turning out 60,000 feet of lumber a day.

Thirty five men were employed at the mill along with a number of boys, The common council of Negaunee ruled that the Johnson Lumber Company could no longer store or raft logs in Teal Lake after July of 1892 as this was the source of the city’s drinking water. This came about because of an existing typhoid problem in the city.

A new road was pushed through to the company’s logging operations that December about three and a half north of the lake. The main logging operations shifted to the C&NW three miles northeast of Champion where they maintained camps for the next six or seven years.

The company also cut cordwood north of Teal Lake for the demand of firewood. The F.W. Read & Company purchased the Teal Lake mill from Neely and Williamson in 1900 and operated timber contracts for the underground mines.

The shut down in 1901. The following month the Negaunee ice man, Bob Thompson, purchased the Teal Lake sawmill building for storage purposes.