Abundant with water and wild rice beds, this prime ancient campsite was most likely used by earlier Native American peoples - for instance the Sioux, who occupied this region before the Ojibwa. Shortly after the Civil War, Thad Thayer established a trading post here and this remote Indian village soon became a substantial settlement. The logging boom of the late 1800's brought many people into the area and, shortly after World War I, the need for cheap electrical power increased. If a dam was built just below the confluence of the West and East Forks of the Chippewa River, the basin of the Chippewa headwaters would make an excellent holding reservoir from which large amounts of electricity could be generated. So, in 1914, the Wisconsin/Minnesota Light and Power Company began the buying up of people's lands that were to be flooded and began construction of the Winter Dam early in 1922. On March15, 1923, the gates of the newly completed dam were closed and by July, the new Chippewa Flowage was formed. Much of the land that was flooded had been logged off, but there still was much standing timber serving as remnants of the forest that once existed there. The people of the trading post had to literally move their settlement, establishing their "New Post" about a mile and half to the southwest.
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