The Earliest Sawmills in the Arcadia Area

The Water-Powered Sawmill near Lower Herring Lake

According to Sam Gilbert, the sawmill owned by “Old Averill” was probably the first in the area. When Sam arrived at Watervale in 1854, Harrison Averill was operating a...

“...sawmill located on the creek

connecting the two Herring

Lakes, about forty or fifty rods

from its mouth at Lower Herring.

-- Howard, John H. 1850. A History of

Herring Lake

Each section in the map is a square mile.

A rod is 16.5 feet, so as John Howard

described it, "forty to fifty rods" from the

creek's mouth at Lower Herring Lake is

660 to 825 feet, which is a little over 1/7

mile. This would place the sawmill today

about where Herring Creek crosses M-

22.

The Steam-Powered

Sawmill South of Arcadia

According to the 1874 census, the

sawmill employed five people and

produced 3,000,000 feet of lumber

valued at $7,500, which is .025 cents per

foot. Until the sawmill was abandoned in

1880, it provided lumber primarily to

people in the area, but because of its

location near Lake Michigan, it also

provided lumber to ships that carried

lumber primarily to Chicago.

Henr

When people homesteaded, they cut

down trees themselves or with the help

of their neighbors and used those logs to

build their first homes. Sawmills like the

Huntington sawmill provided finished

lumber used for other purposes, for

example, to build better homes, barns,

boarding houses, schools, stores, and

other structures for settlements built

around a thriving lumber industry.