Beef Slough War
A business conflict, ca. 1868-1880, over access by logging companies to the vast timber wealth in the Chippewa River watershed.
When saw mill owners on the Chippewa River at Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls held back logs belonging to their competitors further downstream on the Mississippi, Frederick Weyerhaueser formed the latter into an effective conglomerate to retaliate. There were episodes of minor violence at times, and employees of the Mississippi companies were arrested for damaging some Chippewa companies' facilities in order to liberate their logs, but the name "war" is meant to indicate business competition rather than physical combat. In 1880, all companies agreed to share access to Chippewa River logs according to a mutually agreed upon formula, and as the volume of logs coming into the Mississippi from Minnesota and the St. Croix River increased, the conflict became less important.Wyman, Mark. The Wisconsin Frontier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).
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