Federick Weyerhaeuser was a successful businessman.He started buying timberland in Wisconsin,and then Minnesota.he invested a lot into Minnesota’s lumber industry.

By the 1900s more than 400 lumber companies were operating in Minnesota.
Minneapolis, Stillwater, and towns along the St. Croix River became beehives of logging activity due to the close proximity of white pine to navigable waterways and newly constructed railways. In just one week in 1875, one railroad company shipped 141 railcars of lumber through Stillwater to points south.

In three short years, another railroad company more than doubled its shipment of lumber from 25 million feet to 54 million feet, while log rafts on the Mississippi River annually exceeded 89 million feet.While