484 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
quantities. The manufacture of this article alone, when railroads open 
the country, will build up an industry sufficient to support a thriving city. 
The principal industry heretofore, has been the manufacture of lumber. 
More than thirty years ago, the magnificent pine timber and the superior 
water power at Grand Rapids, attracted the hardy lumbermen to this region 
of the state, and, although, the only means of getting the lumber products 
to market, is by the uncertain floods in the Wisconsin river, yet a business 
has been built up in this county that now amounts to millions of dollars per 
annum. 
Supported almost entirely by this business there has grown up on the 
banks of the Wisconsin river, at Grand Rapids, a city of 2,000 inhabitants , 
(including the village of Centralia.) 
The county is forty miles from the nearest railroad, and has no steam¬ 
boat communication; but roads are now projected, and being built, that 
will cross the county in different directions. One, the Green Bay and Lake 
Pepin road, is contracted to be completed to Grand Rapids by the first day 
of January, 1872, and several other lines will be built within a few years. 
It is believed that no county in the state possesses more of the natural 
elements of wealth, awaiting development. To the immigrant and labor¬ 
ing man it affords great advantages. Lands are now cheap. Choice hard¬ 
wood lands can be bought for, from two to five dollars per acre, and are 
rapidly increasing in value. Good hay and cranberry marshes can be 
bought of the state for seventy-five cents per acre. Labor commands high 
prices, and is always in demand. 
There is within the county the most valuable water power, taking all 
things into consideration, to be found in the valley of the Mississippi. The 
falls in the Wisconsin river, from the head of the Grand Rapids to Point 
Bass, are ten miles in extent, with an abundant supply of water. The 
power can be very easily and cheaply improved, and can be used on both 
sides of the river, and made to propel all the machinery that can be placed 
upon it. 
Two-thirds of the county is now covered with a dense forest of pine and 
hard-wood timber, embracing all the timber trees common to the climate. 
The soil, when cleared of its timber, is all that the husbandman can desire. 
With all the advantages, that nature has provided with so lavish a hand, 
it does not require the gift of prophecy to foresee that the county of Wood 
has before it a brilliant future. 
