Knox Mills

“Knox Mills no longer exists – that is, it no longer exists as it once was. At the turn of the century it was a busy lumber town. It remained so until the timber was gone and then it became a farming community. The last mill closed in 1931 when the timber was almost gone, the country in a depression and the rails removed. Now the farming community is gone as well. There are only a few farms struggling along.”

This quote is from Culture and Continuity of Knox Mills, Wisconsin (1864 – 1931) written by Joyce I. Bant, June 1985. Joyce, a native of Knox Mills, conducted extensive research on Knox Mills that resulted in a manuscript documenting the settlement and history of Knox Mills. Joyce has graciously given permission to share excerpts from her research project in this Price County GenWeb site. Due to the length of her manuscript, only excerpts have been used here to provide you with a glimpse into the past and the community of Knox Mills. All of the quotes are directly from her manuscript. Joyce’s information may be reproduced, however, please be sure to cite her work as your resource. For more information on her complete manuscript, please contact her at: joyce.bant@gmail.com

Knox Mills was located in southern Price County, in the Town of Knox. The community thrived along Old Mill Road, a 1-mile stretch of gravel road that runs east and west between West Knox Road and County Highway D.

Excerpts from the Introduction:

“When W. H. Knox, E. H. Hobe, and Bradley and Collins owned the mills it was a company town with a school, a post office, a general store and boarding and company houses for the employees, which clustered around the mills and formed a nucleus. There were no streets but it was divided into two sections. The east side of town, by the pond, was known as Frog Town. It was named for the multitude of frogs that lived by the water there and brought attention to themselves by their croaking and singing. The west side of town was Pig Town. It was so named because most of the residents of the company houses on that side of town raised pigs.”

“Beyond this nucleus Knox Mills extended to the school district #1 boundaries. Within those boundaries were nine whole and four half sections, a total of 7,040 acres. If you were born or died within those boundaries the record gave the place of birth or death as Knox Mills. Therefore, Knox Mills was not only the little mill town but also the entire farming community that surrounded it.”

“When the mills were operating the Soo Line found it profitable to maintain a track off their main line into Knox Mills. That main line ran east and west from Minneapolis to Rhinelander about four and one-half miles north of Knox Mills. The logging trails that ran into Knox Mills were as important as the railroad. They ran like spokes into town, making it the hub of logging operations during the winter months. Every day people and products flowed in and out of the little community. Now Knox Mills isn’t even on the map. The mills, homes, church and store are all gone now. The school is gone too and with it the perimeter of the community. All that is left in the town is Floyd’s Salvage Yard. His place of business was once the cheese factory. There are also two residences left that have been there since the beginning. The one in Pig Town was originally owned by Town Treasurer (1897 – 1900) Robert Rasmussen and Minnie, his wife, who was a Knox Mills teacher from 1898 – 1091.”

“The other residence is in Frog Town, almost directly across from Floyd’s Salvage Yard…Audrey (Thorbus) Birch of California now owns that home. Ironically, her mother is my Dad’s sister, so the two oldest houses have ties to Oscar Swenson, one of Knox Mills first settlers.”

“The story of Knox Mills is tied to land speculation. After the territory was surveyed rich land speculators sent “timber cruisers” in to find the richest stands of pine, the only thing that was valuable to them at the time. Frances Palms was the first one to find the pinelands where Knox Mills is located. He acquired that land shortly after it was surveyed, when it was still wild and unsettled. When the land was opened up it would become valuable, and he could afford to wait. That land became attractive to potential buyers after the railroad was built into the territory, making it easier for supplies to be shipped for logging camps and for access to the land. Palms had speculated on the worth of the pine timber and twelve years after he acquired the Knox Mills lands, he reaped the harvest of his speculation by selling them to the Knox Brothers, William and Samuel.”

“When the Knox Brothers purchased the land in Town 35 North, Range 3 East, from Francis Palms they were logging pine timber just north of there and shipping it down the Somo River to their mill in Wausau. They purchased the Knox Mills lands strictly for the profit they could make from the valuable pine timber. For ten years they logged the pine and shipped it to Wausau. In 1890 the mill burned at Wausau and the two brothers decided to split their interests. William stayed on to finish logging the pine in Town 35 North, Range 3 East, and built a new mill along Long Meadow Creek where it could be damned up to create a sizable pond. He built his own town around the Mills, making it a company town of exclusively transients. He had chosen this place because taxes were low; there were few settlers in need of roads, schools and other services. During the time that William Knox owned the Knox Mills lands he waged the biggest tax war in Price County history. He was very powerful and his influence was felt in the opening up of the territory and in the creation of town boundaries in the southeaster section of the county, the Town of Knox eventually being named after him. After five years the pine timber was cut and Mr. Knox moved on to other uncut pinelands.”

“After the pine was cut the Knox Mills land remained valuable for other purposed. In 1895, William Knox sold the land to E. H. Hobe, a real estate speculator for a tidy profit. Knox had not sold any of his land to individuals, and Hobe saw this mill town with acres of land surrounding it as an attraction for prospective buyers. The large pine had been cut, making the land easier to clear for farms. The land was still covered with hemlock and hardwood. Hobe planned to run the mill in his town and to buy wood from farmers, providing income from both farm and forest. His advertisements extolling the virtues of this combination of assets attracted mostly Norwegians who were well settled in the community by 1900.”

“By then Hobe also had made considerable profit and was ready to move on to other real estate ventures. Hobe put the remaining land up for sale in a package with his mill town. Thick hardwood and hemlock forests remained to be cut, and in that year the Bradley and Collins Company, which had other enterprises in the area, purchased the package. Rather than speculating, William H. Bradley, who ran the company, was accumulating property. Bradley owned much property in Lincoln and Price County and he added Knox Mills to his collection of profit making property. He died January 7, 1903, and his heirs were not interested in Knox Mills. They sold the planning mill, boarding houses, company store and dance hall, which were then moved out of town to other locations. Those sales marked the end of the company town. Then K. O. Knutson, built a new store and dance hall. Knox Mills became a community of permanent residents who owned their own homes rather than one of transients who lived in the boarding houses. Until the Bradley Company sold its three forty-acre tracts of mill property in 1913 to three separate individuals, Knox Mills existed only as a shipping point for forest products.”

“After the best of everything was gone, Knox Mills ceased to be of interest to the speculators who reaped the harvests of the community. Those absentee landlords derived great profits from the rich forestland in and around Knox Mills but lived and spent those profits elsewhere. After the Bradley Company’s mill site was divided and sold, the new owners made their homes in Knox Mills and ran independent mills until the Great Depression. In 1926 a cheese factory was built, marking the transition from a logging to a dairying community. Knox Mills had boomed because of its rich timber resources and those were gone. Residents now relied on farming to sustain themselves, but good farmland is something they never had.”

“By 1931 its major resource was almost gone and…without and other valuable resources the town began to die.”

“Knox Mills was a small, isolated community located at the end of the tracks rather than on a main rail line. There were no town records because it was never incorporated; it has no newspapers and its businesses never ran ads.”

Excerpts from Chapter 2 Pine Lands for Sale:

“Before the lands that were destined to be Knox Mills were purchased for logging they were covered with hemlock, white and yellow birch, tamarack, spruce, balsam, rock elm, butternut, red oak, hard and soft maple, basswood, white and black ash, cedar and aspen, in addition to vast stretched of pine. Through this unbroken forest in southeaster Price County, Wisconsin, a small stream, Long Meadow Creek, now known as Knox Creek, flowed into a branch of the Manito, or Spirit River. This forestland had been virtually untouched by humans. Native Americans followed trails north and south of the area but not through this land. An occasional hunter followed Long Meadow Creek, as is evidenced by a flint stone arrow found along its banks a long time ago by a Knox Mills farmer, but other than that there is no evidence that anyone had ever set foot on this land until July 1, 1864. On that day the solitude was broken when a surveyor, with the help of two chainmen and an axe-man, began surveying Town 35 North, Range 3 East. The task was completed that year and the land was opened for settlement. Some of the land was granted to the railroad; some was reserved for homesteads; and the rest was offered for sale.”

“During 1867 and 1868, thirty-three years after the first land sale in Wisconsin, Francis Palms obtained these lands along with other vast holdings in the Price County area.”

“The lands that Francis Palms obtained in Price County were granted to him through Acts of Congress in 1847, 1850, 1852, and 1855. These acts granted free land as an encouragement for military purposes. Palm’s service in the Union Army during the Civil War hardly entitled him to so much land, so he arranged for the land to be granted to officers of soldiers,, some of whom were deceased, and then had it assigned back to him. Palms also acquired land through an 1862 Act of Congress, which granted land for agricultural schools. He purchased some of it for $1.25 an acre under the terms of the pre-emption acts.”

“His [Palms] acquisition of vast holdings in Wisconsin and Michigan won him the distinction of being the largest landowner in the Northwest and possibly the entire Untied States.”

“Palms was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1810, and came to America in 1836 with his father, Ange, who had amassed a fortune in manufacturing…The wealth and power that the Palms family brought with them to America enabled Francis to acquire the vast pinelands.”

“In 1870, soon after Palms acquired his land, the Wisconsin Central was organized. It had reached Worcester by the fall of 1873 and rested at that point until the summer of 1876 when it was pushed through to Ashland and finished in the spring of 1877. That line ran north and south about ten miles west of those lands. It was the railroad that opened up the territory and attracted settlers and interested buyers.”

“On January 1, 1881, the Knox Brothers and James McCrossen purchased the property that Palms owned in Towns 35 and 36 North, Range 3 East, thus launching the early history of Knox Mills.”

“The land that Palms had purchased for $1.25 an acre preemptively now brought him more than $8.00 and acre and the price of the land would again increase drastically after all of the pine was cut.”

“The Knox Brothers discouraged new settlers because they didn’t want to pay for roads and schools” “Woodwork was seasonal and the men who worked for them lived in camps while their families lived elsewhere.”

“…The Phillips Badger encouraged settlers to locate in Price County.”

The newspaper ads encouraged settlers to the area with descriptions of inexpensive farmlands and guidance on how to become one’s own master within a short time.

“By 1882 every homestead was taken.”

“An article in the October 12, 1881, issue of the Phillips Badger stated: “…Government land can be secured under the homestead and pre-emption laws, or land can be bought of the Wisconsin Central Railroad at from $2 to $6 an acre by paying ¼ down and 7% interest for a term of years. In some instances desirable land from which the pine has been cut can be secured for private owners for a song.”

“The cost of a comfortable log house ranges from $40 upwards when one hires the work done; or 4 or 5 days work will build one. Once under a roof, one need never lie idle a day; the demand for labor is urgent, and the pay from $20 a month and board for raw muscle runs to $5 and $6 a day for skilled mechanics. A man with a good team can get from $60 to $75 a month with board and deed, through the logging season.”

“The newspaper articles not only show the degree of salesmanship used to entice settlers to the area, but also give an idea of how they lived and worked when they arrived. The timber on the land was the first crop with which they built shelters for themselves and their cattle. Potatoes, cabbages, turnips, beets, peas, beans and other food crops plus the milk, butter and cheese products had a practically insatiable market in the logging camps.”

Joyce’s manuscript describes in depth the “squabbles over who was responsible for taxes to open up the new frontier” that led to “the biggest tax war in Price County history” and the tax litigation and formation of town boundaries that followed.

By 1900, “…there were 123 inhabitants [in Knox Mills] and in 1905 there were 124.”

“To attract settlers, farmers formed the North Wisconsin Farmers Association in 1903 to awaken interest in northern Wisconsin throughout Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and southern Wisconsin. They worked with the railroads to help induce settlers to the area. The Wisconsin Central Railroad offered reduced fares to all stations in Price County for prospective settlers.”

“Immigration efforts were successful because the Town of Knox census taken in 1910 showed a gain in population of 164 since 1905 and 57 of those were in Knox Mills, the little mill town that was already quite heavily populated.”

Joyce’s manuscript includes a chapter devoted exclusively to logging by the Knox Brothers and other influential lumbermen in Price County. Another chapter is devoted to the influence of the Wisconsin Central Railroad and the Minneapolis, St. Paul, Sault Ste. Marie Railroad. We hope to reproduce her information in another section of this site in the future.

Suffice it to say, both the logging industry and the railroads were the primary influences of settlers to many areas in Price County.

“In the summer of 1895, Knox began to advertise his lands for sale.” “Knox encouraged settlers for his cutover lands, some two thousand acres, near Knox Mills and some near Clifford, by offering a special bargain. A 240-acre farm, 120 acres of it cleared, together with a two story house. E. H. Hobe, the immigration agent of the “Soo” at St. Paul, was in charge of getting people to settle on the cut lands in the Knox Mills vicinity. The “Soo” also issued a pamphlet by T. I. Hurd, the company’s land and industrial agent.”

“The only farm in Knox Mills that was there in 1883-84 and was still operating in 1895 was that of Johan Lind and his farm was used as a model for the “Soo” railroad advertising.”

“The town that Engebreth H. Hobe bought at the end of the year 1896 was a virtual ghost town. William H. Knox had removed the saw mill and the tracks. The planning mill had burned. The only inhabitants of the town were mill employees, and the families of the men who were engaged in the logging operations. Since none of them owned land there, they had no reason to stay. Most moved to other mill locations…”

Hobe’s position as Swedish-Norwegian Vice Consulate “…brought Hobe into contact with the many Norwegian in the Midwest. It is perhaps for this reason that the majority of settlers that were attracted to Knox Mills were Norwegians who came from Iowa and Minnesota, where he conducted a real estate business.”

“Settlers began arriving, attracted by the “Soo: line ads and E. H. Hobe’s real estate business. Most were Norwegians from Iowa. They came with their families, and carloads of cows, horses and poultry to carve a farm from the cutover land. Some bought land sight unseen, but others like J. L. Sandquist’s Swedish family from Minnesota, came by train to Brantwood. They arrived during the night, and walked to Knox Mills following the railroad bed. They stayed in one of the company houses until they found suitable land and built a home.”

“Mr. E. H. Hobe didn’t only confine his interests to Knox Mills. After his mill was built there and a thriving business had begun he turned his interests to Brantwood, five miles north.”

Excerpts from the section, Social Life and Institutions (The Hobe Years):

“During the Knox years St. Patrick’s Catholic Church of Phillips had established a mission at Knox Mills. There were churches for the Protestants located in Spirit, a few miles to the south.”

“One of the first things the new settlers that came to Knox Mills did was to start a congregation of their own. A short history found in the cornerstone when the church was they built in 1902 was torn down stated that on March 15, 1898, twelve families, under the guidance of Pastor L. E. Nord, started the Nathaneal Skandinavian Lutheran congregation.”

“The first officers appointed were: Secretary – Nils A. Brekke; Treasurer – Oliver Berhow; Trustees – Herman Sandquist and Enok Erickson; and Kerkesanger – Ole Haugerud.”

“On January 2, 1901, the Ladies Aid Society was organized.”

“The Modern Woodmen of America…Knox Mills Camp #5801 was organized on January 25, 1901, with a beginning membership of 23. Meetings were held twice a month…The M.W.A. offered life and accident insurance for its members.”

“Alfred Sandquist, a Knox Mills resident, and H. A. Harris, the bald headed depot agent at Brantwood, organized the Knox Mills band in 1898, and they were frequent entertainers. Another source of entertainment was added on February 10, 1900, when Ole Karl Hobe married Helen Anita Adams…E. H. Hobe gave them a piano as a wedding gift. It was the only one in town. Helen Hobe and her mother, Helen Adams, played the piano and sang.”

“…Knox Mills residents had parties in their homes where sometimes as many as fifty people met to dance and play games. They celebrated birthdays, anniversaries and other events in the lives of their neighbors and friends.”

Excerpts from the chapter: Town Government (The Hobe Years):

“The Town of Knox was a new town when E. H. Hobe purchased the Knox Lands. The first annual meeting and election had been held at Knox’s store on April 7, 1896. William H. Knox was elected chairman.”

“Town government was carried on as it had been when the Town of Knox was with the Town of Brannon. The town was responsible for its schools, roads and the poor. Constables provided the law enforcement and Justices of the Peace settled disputes, decided a person’s guilt or innocence and meted out punishment.”

“A major concern of that board was communicable diseases such as diphtheria, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and small pox because there were no means of prevention and poor methods to cure the disease once it was contracted. Their job was to place a quarantine on the whole household of the victim of the disease until any chance of passing the illness along has passed to prevent epidemics. Before the quarantine could be lifted the home had to be fumigated.”

“By the end of 1901 Knox Mills had a new owner. Mr. Hobe had sold all of his lands, mill, store, railroad, etc. to the Bradley and Collins Company of Tomahawk.”

“The President of the company, William H. Bradley…[owner of the Electric, Water and Telephone Company], extended its line into Brannan making communication with Tomahawk a reality as early as 1900.”

[By the end of 1901]”…connections by rail and phone were complete as far as Spirit.”

“Knox Mills was looking forward to a new prosperity [under Bradley’s ownership]. “However, on January 7, 1903…Bradley died of cirrhosis of the liver…”

“Soon after his death his partners, brothers Edward and James, and W. G. Collins, began selling some of the business enterprises…The stock at Knox Mills was sold to K. O. Knutson, a farmer who had moved to Knox Mills when Hobe did.”

“The switch from a company town to a private industry was gradual. Knox Mills had always been a shipping point, and it continued on as it had in the past. The Soo Line picked up cordwood, ties and logs along the Knox Mills branch from the farmers who were cutting their own wood, and local farmers were kept busy loading for other mills that shipped their product from that point.”

“The Norwegian Lutheran Church…found an acre of land in the SW ¼ of the NW ¼ of Section 22…They built a church there in February 1902 and located a cemetery beside it.”

“Roads in most places were just twelve feet wide and were so rocky and rutty that teams had to follow the center of the road. They were hemmed in by logs and brush on either side. When teams met, or had to pass, they had to wait until they could find a favorable place on the road.”

Excerpts from the chapter, A Withering Economy (1905 – 1909):

“In the winter Knox Mills residents made their living working in the logging industry. During the summer months they farmed.”

“By 1905 creameries had begun to be built throughout the county and the home dairy was being replaced with a factory method. A creamery was built close by, in Spirit, in 1906. Prior to the creamery, butter was churned at home and farmers had to find their own market for the finished product. They usually sold it locally for 12 to 15 cents a pound. Now the cream was shipped to a local creamery which was a surer market and a steadier source of income.”

Fighting the raising cost of taxes brought farmers together. “Some of those farmers had become interested in a different view to solving their problems. Socialism had been advocated for some time in the northern portion of the Town of Knox and the platform of the Socialist Party in 1900 “called on the toiling masses to wage war on the exploiting classes until the system of wage slavery shall be abolished and the cooperative commonwealth established.” Most farmers must have seen themselves as the toiling masses and for some of them the time was ripe for a turn to a different view. Knox Mills had always been a Republican town, so for them the radicalism of Socialism was quite alien to their nature.”

“In 1907 quite a different Fourth of July than ever commemorated in Knox Mills was celebrated under the shade trees at the home of Alfred Sandquist…Alfred Sandquist’s home was located at the extreme northern end of Knox Mills and was a likely place for the Fourth of July event that took place that year. It was the first Socialist celebration ever held in Price County. Everyone was invited.”

“The program was in English and Finnish with songs and music. And lasted six hours. It was the greatest number of Socialists ever gathered together in Price County.”

Excerpts from the chapter, New Smaller Mills (1910 – 1918):

“In 1914 the Ogema Telephone Company began constructing a system of telephone lines into Knox Mills.”

“In 1910 a Knox Mill landmark was built. It was the Stone Arch Bridge on Old Mills Road that crossed Long Meadow, or Knox Creek. Automobiles were also beginning to appear.”

“Carl Sandquist of Brantwood became the owner of a Columbia Grand Concert Grafanola and a collection of Columbia records and entertained people from surrounding communities with evenings of music and dancing. Elmer Carlson, also of Brantwood, purchased a moving picture machine and traveled to surrounding communities entertaining crowds with movies. At times, the two, Carl and Elmer, would combine their amusements. They became popular entertainers in Pre-World War I. Many of their performances were held at K. O. Knutson’s Hall above his store in Knox Mills.”

“In 1914 a member of the community appeared before the Town Board of the Town of Knox and brought it to their attention that there wasn’t a cemetery in the Town for people who weren’t affiliated with any church. Since the Norwegian Lutheran Church had established a cemetery by the church when it was built they sold their old cemetery located on West Knox Road, just north of Old Mill Road to the Town of Knox to be used as the town cemetery.”

Although the cemetery is still there, all but three of the tombstones have been vandalized and destroyed. Link: Knox Mills Cemetery

“By 1914 a growing economy and World War I increased the demand for wood products. Business at Knox Mills escalated as the large mills, numerous small jobbers, and area farmers stepped up their shipment of products along the Soo Line from Knox Mills.”

By 1916 there were fifty cars a day being shipped out between January and March. Most of the wood products shipped out went to Rhinelander and consisted of logs, ties, pulpwood and bark.”

“A growing economy meant a growing population, and in 1916 Knox Mills found that when its school house doors opened for the 1916-17 school year, the school room was too small to meet the growing demands of the Knox Mills country. That year there were over eighty children of school age in the district.”

“In 1917 the United States entered World War I. At their annual town meeting in 1917 the town government passed a resolution against the war. Copies of the resolution protesting the war were sent to President Wilson, Senators Husting and LaFollette and to Congressman J. L. Lemont of the Town of Knox congressional district.”

“In June of 1917, Knox Mills boys had to go to Prentice and from there to Worcester to the Hackett Town Hall in order to register for the draft (this route indicates that they went by train). Like all other young Americans, they began watching newspapers to see when they were called to service for their country. Four young men from Knox Mills were called: Gerhardt Erickson, Nick Kaski, John Niemi and John Nuutinen.”

Excerpts from the chapter, A Logging Boom (1919 – 1925):

“Work at the mills was seasonal so the mill owners, who had men working at the mill and in the woods, had to employ men who would be satisfied with the seasonal work. Farmers gladly took the jobs. The mills had to shut down for a short time in the spring so the farmers could do their spring work on the farms. When work was slow the Hill Timber Company mill kept its men busy by producing food for their camps. Men who weren’t farmers left for the Dakota fields during harvest time because business was slow then at Knox Mills.”

“Knox Mills was a hub, and the logging trails led into that hub from all directions like a spoke. Those logging roads were used year after year and were as important to Knox Mills as the railroad. Logging operations went on over them approximately three months of the year, day and night, during the winter months.”

“Knox Mills had become one of the busiest logging towns in the area. However, most of the timber in the area had been cut and removed and the country’s economy was slowing down. The end of logging activity in and around Knox Mills could not be foreseen by its residents as yet. In fact, farmers had been clearing land as the timber was cut and the future for Knox Mills looked bright, not only as a logging community, but as a farming community as well.”

Excerpts from the chapter, From Logging to Dairying:

“About the time that logging peaked in Knox Mills, the economy got a boost when a cheese factory was built there. C. R. Stein, who had purchased the Knox Mills store from K. O. Knutson in 1921, built the cheese factory next to his store in 1926.”

“By the early 1920’s farmers in the area were replacing their scrub cows with better breeds. They were feeding them better too. Louis Larson and Arthur Lind purchased a feed mill with which to grind their own corn and oats. Farmers who didn’t grind their own could purchase feed from Stein’s store. Some Knox Mills farmers also built silos, the big round “reserve jar” for preserving fresh green fodder for winter use by the herd. The improved farms and farming methods resulted in the needed large volume of milk required by the cheese factory.”

“The same year Stein built his cheese factory, Elmer Swenson, a local resident, built a store…on the east side of Highway D where it intersects with Old Mill Road. It was the first time Knox Mills had two stores.”

“The little Swenson store struggled along. In 1927 the brothers, Oscar and Elick joined Elmer and the store became known as the Swenson Brothers store. They installed an electric light plant, added a gasoline pump, and in 1928 built an addition in hopes of competing with C. R. Stein. They had not foreseen the decline in the lumber industry and that the town was no longer large enough to need both stores. In 1929 Elick purchased Swenson’s store and in 1930 sold it to Elmer. In 1931 Elmer sold it to his son-in-law, Edwin Larson, who ran it until 1970.”

“Farming was the main source of income for Knox Mills residents after the mills closed and the rails were taken up in 1931.”

Excerpts from the chapter, Social Life and Institutions (1919-1931):

“K. O. Knutson’s Hall was a social center for the Knox Mills community…In addition to the usual dances, A Mr. Welland gave shows featuring vaudeville acts and movies which were held during the week as well as on week-ends. The hall was also used as a community center for school events.”

“The Fourth of July was the main celebration of the year for the Knox Mills community. In 1920 it was held at the Elmer Swenson home.”

“The following year the Fourth of July community picnic was held at the Hemmi Kaski home. Mrs. Kaski was also Olive Berthow’s daughter. It would be the last Fourth of July celebration sponsored by the Ladies Aid Society of the Norwegian Lutheran Church, and also the last one celebrated together as a community. There were too few interested and the entire burden of planning and holding the celebration was on the shoulders of those few.”

“In 1924 John and Elsie Pack moved into the community. Soon after they moved there Elsie became friends with Sophia Lind, the wife of Arthur, the first white child born in the Town of Knox. They began celebrating their birthdays and included Sophia’s long time friend, Rhoda Hendrickson. They added more friends to their circle and birthday celebrations soon became a community event.”

“Knox Mills had always been a “dry” town but after the start of prohibition some members of the community began making “home brew” and offering it for sale in their homes. In 1925 the town government issued strict orders for Constables and Justices of the Peace to go after bootleggers operating in the Town of Knox.”

“The school was the center of the community that remained so for the entire history of Knox Mills. It was a social and cultural center for every member of the community.”

“The school was situated picturesquely on three-quarters of an acre of land…On the west side of the property there was a storage shed for wood. In back of the school were two outhouses, each situated at opposite corners of the school. They were connected to the school with board walks. In the front of the school was some playground equipment purchased in 1926. A wire fence ran along two sides of the property with a board fence in the front and a gate to the board walk that led to the front door. Along this board fence were pine and other shade trees. In the back there was a wood providing a natural borders.”

“Inside the school the vestibule held the wood box, the bubbler and a stand in the corner with a washbasin. It was also the cloakroom with hooks for coats and a shelf above for hats and gloves. There were two doors leading into the assembly, one at each end of the north wall of the vestibule. In the assembly there were rows of desks on slats. A chimney was built in the center of the north end of the building and there is where the stove to heat the school stood. To the side of that, and in front of the assembly, was the teacher’s desk with chairs arranged around it where classes were held. On the opposite side school supplies were stored as the school provided pupils with everything they needed for their studies. Beside that storage stood a piano. In the back of the assembly, on the right side of the assembly facing north, were the bookcases comprising the library. On the opposite side the tine dishes and supplies for serving noon meals were stored. There were large chalk boards on the east, west and south walls and a large pull down map in the front.”

“The school day began with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. After that there was a short music period with songs to fit the theme of the day….Classes were then held. They were in constant motion for there were eight grades, each having their various courses of study. Subjects taught in 1906 were Agriculture, Physical Geography, Arithmetic, Geometry, English and American Literature, English Composition, Physics, English and U.S. History and Algebra.”

“During the years of low pupil census all eight grades were excused together at recess. During years of high census pupils were excused for recess according to their age and grade. Besides the usual ballgames during the spring and fall, other games were played. Red rover, follow the Leader, Tag, Hide and Seek, Drop the Handkerchief, Anthony Over, Leap frog, Crack the Whip and Hop Scotch were favorites. In the winter there was a toboggan slide and the pupils brought their skies and sleds. A favorite winter game was Fox and Geese. When the weather was bad indoor games of Blind Man’s Bluff, I Spy, jacks, musical chairs and a variety of guessing games, such as Animal, Vegetable or Mineral were played.”

“There was a large turnover of teachers. Knox Mills produced five of its own teachers: Minnie Rasmussen, Tillie Hallstrand, Alvira Alm, Gertrude Erickson and Arthur Tikka. Those teachers stayed more than one year. All of the teachers that came from other towns boarded in one of the homes near the school.”

“The school, as well as the church was not only the glue that held the community together, they were left unlocked and provided havens for anyone passing through in need of shelter.”

Excerpts from the chapter, The Winding Down:

“…in 1925, when it was thought that there were only enough standing timber for five years more logging in the Knox Mills district, reforestation began.”

“To be eligible for the lower taxes land had to be turned into what was known as “forest crop”. The first forest crop was planted in Knox Mills in 1931. Some landowners couldn’t afford to pay the taxes and couldn’t project themselves fifty to seventy-five years in the future when a forest crop would finally yield some profits, and let their land go for nonpayment of taxes.”

“On July 27, 1931, a crew of twenty-five men and a switch engine, derrick and other paraphernalia to expedite the work, began working on removing the rails from the Knox Branch. Within a week the rails were removed. The Knox Mills lumbering days were over.”