In just a half century, the Ontonagon mining district had transitioned from a frontier with no interior roads, to a major copper producer, to a major employer of forest products.

The Ontonagon Lumber Company, a joint venture between three brothers from Wisconsin and a group of lumber barons from Chicago, opened for business on the Ontonagon River in 1881. A year later another, and larger, venture started up its mill on the west bank of the same river. This was the Sisson and Lilley Lumber Company.

George D. Sisson and Francis Lilley had come to Ontonagon from downstate Ottawa County, where they had built an impressive lumber business years before. The large tract of pine land they bought in Ontonagon County adjoined the lighthouse property, and they started construction on their sawmill in July 1882.

According to the History of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Sisson’s and Lilley’s mill was 180 feet long by 52 feet wide. The attached engine house measured 55×85 and contained two large engines that operated the mill to a cutting capacity of 225,000 feet per day.

The following year, the mill was expanded to cut half a million shingles per day. Sisson and Lilley also constructed a machine shop and even a foundry. The company also built a large boarding house for its employees. By 1883, the number of workers, at the mill and in the forests, numbered more than 250.

Sisson and Lilley were used to huge operations like this. Sisson and a partner, Thomas Seymore, had organized the Sisson and Seymore company in Spring Lake, in Ottawa County, Michigan, in 1872, and a year later, Lilley joined them. Sisson and Lilley had been partners in a previous mill lumber company that was organized in 1856.

While Sisson and Lilley were getting established at Ontonagon, their Spring Lake mill, with a capacity of 200,000 feet per day, was destroyed by fire in 1883. After being rebuilt, it was again destroyed by fire in 1884.

While the Ontonagon Lumber Company, organized by Wisconsin and Chicago investors, and the Sisson and Lilley company, headquartered in Lower Michigan, were starting, the Diamond Match Company also arrived.

Diamond Match began lumber operations in Ontonagon County in 1884 and just a year later, employed more than 500 men in its lumber camps and mills.

The Diamond Match Company was organized in December 1880 and headquartered in Connecticut. The company was the result of a merger between two giant match companies, Wilmington, Delaware-based Swift, Courtney & Beecher and O.C. Barber of Philadelphia, and 10 smaller companies. Author and historian, Mike Prero’s 1997 article, The Story of a Giant: Diamond Match Company (1881 – Present), published by the Matchcover Vault, Diamond began expanding immediately, buying out or taking over other companies, purchasing five other match companies within its first 12 months. The Chicago Lumber Company and the Sisson-Lilley mill, in Ontonagon County, were quickly absorbed by the Diamond company, as were their timberlands.The Diamond company owned 30,000 acres of timberland. Like the Ontonagon and the Sisson-Lilley companies, the Diamond also sold most of its lumber to Chicago markets. Only lower grade wood was made into matchsticks.

The match company had an enormous influence on Ontonagon County. For instance, the unincorporated community of Matchwood, in Matchwood Township, was founded in 1888 by the company that built it.

Bruce Crossing, likewise, had started out in 1863 as a relay station on the Military Road between Fort Wilkins and Fort Howard, near Green Bay. The Diamond company established logging camps in the area in the 1880s. Originally Bruce’s Crossing, by the late 1880s, a railroad had begun running through the crossing. There, the Donald Bruce hotel, store and saloon were built. The fledgling town was named after Bruce, who was its first postmaster when that office opened in 1888.

In February 1889, Charles Lawton, commissioner of Michigan Mineral Statistics, stated in his 1889 annual report:

“Just now Ontonagon county seems rather quiet, especially at the villages; many of the men are in the woods, on homesteads, or cutting and drawing logs for the Diamond Match Co.”

Still, in the face of timber having become the principle economic factor in Ontonagon County, a few copper mines hung on. Lawton reported on the mines in what was called the Evergreen Range, writing that at nearly all the mines in that range, “a few men are working and, for the effort made, are obtaining good results.” But, he commented, the properties there were too restricted for the modern methods of mining in the Lake Superior district. The Ridge mine, he wrote, was comparatively small compared to those in Houghton County, but produced about 2,600 pounds of copper.

The Ontonagon district had been opened because of copper from both the Minesota and the National mines. The wealth of these two mines had stimulated mining throughout the district.

As Mineral Commissioner Lawton stated in his 1889 report:

“Mines innumerable were opened and worked for a while, some of which absorbed a great amount of capital, but nearly all resulted in disappointment and failure.”

Lawton also had the courage to say what no one else had previously said publicly:

“These two only, the National and the Minesota, situated side by side, are almost the only mines that redeem the mining history of Ontonagon county from a record of total failure.”

It was true. But yet, in the face of the logging boom, which sapped the labor force from the mining ventures, the end of the 1880s would see a renewed interest in the mines that had been left to fill with water. The new mining technologies so successful in the Portage Lake district would soon be applied to the old Ontonagon mines, bringing old mid-19th century ventures into the 20th century as new, highly financed corporations.