Grandfather Falls dam and power generating facility is owned and operated by Wisconsin Public Service Corporation.

While traveling up stream, a party of these voyageurs encountered the rapids at Mosinee and named it Taureau, French for "bull."

Beneath this range, igneous rock formed which now is called pre-Cambrian bedrock, the top layers of the mountains having been worn down by erosion.

In more recent geologic time, glaciers scoured the surface exposing this pre-Cambrian rock in many areas, leaving irregular drainage throughout the north woods with many rapids and falls as features of the streams.

[9] Grandfather Falls lies in this pre-Cambrian rock bed,[10] and is thus a remnant of the physical geography of this ancient mountain range.

Although there are no precise records of when and to what degree trade started on the upper Wisconsin, it was known to be a significant route by around the turn of the nineteenth century.

Lac du Flambeau was a large Ojibwe town within which Montreal fur traders built semi-permanent trading posts, including by more than one company simultaneously.

[13]As Jenny (Merrill) developed in the 1870s, it became a point of departure for suppliers to the logging camps: [I]n the summer months canoes were the common means of conveyance.

[21] In the Wisconsin lumbering era, this issue was of such a concern that it made front-page news as a business-related item in newspapers around the state, in the same way that modern business pages report shipping traffic or the price of oil.

[23] In 1938 Wisconsin Public Service Corporation commenced a major project to exploit the entire 90 foot drop for power.

On the east side of the river, construction crews built a canal which diverts the water to two intake ports feeding penstocks.

These dampen the flow and allow maximum energy from the gravitational force of the water to drive the generator wheels, thus optimizing overall efficiency.

The plaintiffs in the case argued that since logs were driven from above the Falls to mills between Wisconsin Rapids and Merrill, for that section of the river the commerce was intrastate only, and not interstate.

Citing precedent, the court said, "The sawing of the logs into lumber at the mills and the change in the mode of transportation did not divide the journey from 'the Pineries' to 'market' into two distinct, unrelated journeys, the first of which is purely intrastate and the other interstate ..."[26] The practical aspect of this designation generally does not have bearing on recreational use of the river, but primarily means that dams — such as the hydroelectric project at Grandfather Falls — require licensing by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.