1886 St. Croix River log jam

After the jam was broken up in July, cleanup work to remove the logs on the river banks continued until September.

After the Wisconsin Territory was established in 1836, large amounts of Native American land were ceded to the United States via the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters.

[4] In the area now covered by Interstate State Park, the St. Croix river marks the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Shortly after midnight on June 13, 1886, while the driving crews were asleep in their tents, the logs were caught at Angle Rock and quickly started to accumulate.

But it remained for Davidson, the hermit, to strike the key-note for a change to all this, by blowing out the Clam river dam with dynamite.

The water from that stream caused a slight rise, and by one of Elias McKean's "most remarkable coincidences", there seemed to be a concert of action by the elements and otherwise.

Logs from the "low-water" drives were easily floated off, and came down stream in immense rafts, almost blockading the river as they moved along.

The channel was too narrow and the current too sluggish to allow their passage in such large bodies, and shortly after midnight, Sunday morning, they "hung-up" and began jamming and piling.

[10][15] For comparison, the average annual production of pine in the St. Croix valley between 1870 and 1889 was 241 million board feet.

[10] On June 18, 1886, the New York Times reported that the jam was over two miles long and the largest to ever occur in the Northwest, and four hundred men were working day and night to clear it, while it was still growing at a rate of 700,000 board feet per hour.

[20] On the other hand, log jams brought large crowds of spectators and were welcomed by the local tourism industry in Taylors Falls.