ROCK ELM, WI – Where rolling farm fields now sit, in the late 1800’s the Town of Rock Elm, Wisconsin looked much different. Early settlers once described the area as the “Big Woods” with “hardwoods three feet wide.”
Meanwhile, Charles Hawn, who in 1848 moved with his parents to Neosho, Wisconsin from New York, learned the miller’s trade, and later carried on a sawmill in Douglas County with David L. White. Hawn spent one season in 1859 in the Rocky Mountains, mining and prospecting. The claim which he worked was afterward sold for a large sum. (Forrester, 1891)
Flour gold was discovered in Plum Creek in the 1860’s. Otis Churchill, Willard Rider and Oscar Fowler were hired by a group of potential settlers in Milwaukee to explore the area for settlement. When they returned, Rider went to Dodge County to Hawn and White. He persuaded them to move their mill to Pierce County with the promise of twenty-five families from Milwaukee settling there, a horse tramway to Maiden Rock, and a shipyard to build boats and barges to ship lumber down river.
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