The Woodland Hotel in the history of Owen
2012 marked the 120 year anniversary of the beginning of the J.S. Owen Lumber Company. In 1892, the J. S. Owen Lumber Co.- originally called the Rust-Owen Lumber Co - surveyed the area around Brick Creek in Central Wisconsin. The Owen Lumber Co. purchased over 30,000 acres of that land because it was so conducive to milling thanks to the Popple River. The 1893 Plat map of Clark County shows the vast area owned by the lumber company. Along with this were the advantages of the nearby railroad tracks and all those thick forests of pristine lumber. The City of Owen takes its name from its founder, A.R. Owen. A.R. Owen was the resident manager of the J.S. Owen Lumber Company.
Records of the John S. Owen Lumber Company include the archived papers of many related companies, which were controlled by John S. Owen or his relatives and associates. These associated companies included logging and lumbering interests throughout Wisconsin and South Dakota to Louisiana in the south and California and Oregon in the west. There were real estate companies, railroads, cotton warehouses, a cotton plantation and shipping companies. These companies survived political and economic setbacks from wars to recessions and depressions from 1892 through 1942.
While John S. Owen was the founder and owner of the lumber company, it was his son A.R. Owen that was the manager of the business in Owen, especially after the death of John S. Owen, age 90, in 1939. A.R.’s brothers were involved with finances and operations of the other businesses.
In 1906, Claude and Starck an architectural firm from Madison, Wisconsin, designed the Woodland Hotel for the J.S. Owen Lumber Company. The hotel was built that same year and opened for business late in December of 1906. The name of the hotel has been disputed but diaries and records indicate that it was named after Woodland Owen, the uncle of John S. Owen who had brought the Owen family to the United States from England. It can be rightly said that Woodland Owen started the prosperous chapters of the Owen family history.
One Central Wisconsin newspaper of the day called the Woodland Hotel "the finest hotel and residence in all of Wisconsin."
In a special edition of the Granton News in September of 1915, the City of Owen was called “a young village but a lusty youngster. Its history is for the most part in the future, but it is a glorious history for all that. There is absolutely no question but that with the assured activities of the saw mill and box factory for the next twenty years or more and other enterprises in the village and the wonderful wealth of agricultural country in a section of two or three hundred square miles of which Owen is the center, and the fact that it is the junction of the Duluth and the St. Paul divisions of the Soo Line and the northern terminal of the Fairchild and Northeastern railroad, there is absolutely no question but that the future of Owen is one of continuous prosperity.”
What the Granton News could not predict, however, was the decline of lumbering in the west and even in the south. Much of their vast land holdings were sold to permanent agricultural interests. Volatile investments and bad deals caused the Owen family to begin divesting themselves of many of their interests and holdings.
The Owen family began to sell off their properties in 1936. After spending almost 45 years accumulating that land it would take them almost 30 years to sell it all off.
As for the John S. Owen Lumber Company, it dissolved in 1942 after 50 years in business.
~ Travis Rogers Jr.
Records of the John S. Owen Lumber Company include the archived papers of many related companies, which were controlled by John S. Owen or his relatives and associates. These associated companies included logging and lumbering interests throughout Wisconsin and South Dakota to Louisiana in the south and California and Oregon in the west. There were real estate companies, railroads, cotton warehouses, a cotton plantation and shipping companies. These companies survived political and economic setbacks from wars to recessions and depressions from 1892 through 1942.
While John S. Owen was the founder and owner of the lumber company, it was his son A.R. Owen that was the manager of the business in Owen, especially after the death of John S. Owen, age 90, in 1939. A.R.’s brothers were involved with finances and operations of the other businesses.
In 1906, Claude and Starck an architectural firm from Madison, Wisconsin, designed the Woodland Hotel for the J.S. Owen Lumber Company. The hotel was built that same year and opened for business late in December of 1906. The name of the hotel has been disputed but diaries and records indicate that it was named after Woodland Owen, the uncle of John S. Owen who had brought the Owen family to the United States from England. It can be rightly said that Woodland Owen started the prosperous chapters of the Owen family history.
One Central Wisconsin newspaper of the day called the Woodland Hotel "the finest hotel and residence in all of Wisconsin."
In a special edition of the Granton News in September of 1915, the City of Owen was called “a young village but a lusty youngster. Its history is for the most part in the future, but it is a glorious history for all that. There is absolutely no question but that with the assured activities of the saw mill and box factory for the next twenty years or more and other enterprises in the village and the wonderful wealth of agricultural country in a section of two or three hundred square miles of which Owen is the center, and the fact that it is the junction of the Duluth and the St. Paul divisions of the Soo Line and the northern terminal of the Fairchild and Northeastern railroad, there is absolutely no question but that the future of Owen is one of continuous prosperity.”
What the Granton News could not predict, however, was the decline of lumbering in the west and even in the south. Much of their vast land holdings were sold to permanent agricultural interests. Volatile investments and bad deals caused the Owen family to begin divesting themselves of many of their interests and holdings.
The Owen family began to sell off their properties in 1936. After spending almost 45 years accumulating that land it would take them almost 30 years to sell it all off.
As for the John S. Owen Lumber Company, it dissolved in 1942 after 50 years in business.
~ Travis Rogers Jr.