1921 Duluth & St Louis County MN, Van Brunt.pdf - Garon.us

762 DULUTH AND ST. LOUIS COUNTY
faculty of fighting to victory without regard to obstacles interposed.
His record is that of a highly successful man and his activities have
made him widely known not only in the Duluth country but in other
states as well.
Mr. Whiteside was born in Ontario, Canada, March 13, 1856. He
had a public school education, but his real training came not from
books but through experiences that developed every physical and
mental faculty in his character, including self-reliance. Only a boy,
he worked in the lumber camps of the South Branch of the Muskoka
River. His first venture was of itself an illustration of independence
and courage. He contracted for the purchase of a tract of stumpage,
and personally labored and engineered the campaign for logging the
tract. It was his first case of real profits from the products of the
iorest.
Mr. Whiteside's association with the Duluth country began forty
years ago, in 1881. The old logging firm of Hall & Norton secured
his services as log and river foreman on the Black River in Wisconsin
on January 10, 1882. In later years Mr. W'hiteside has made a large
part of his fortune through his mining interests. At the beginning,
however, he was a practical timber man, and as a timber cruiser he
explored many of the ranges without a thought of the treasures
underground. Some of his early explorations deserve permanent
record in the history of the iron ranges. In 1883 he went on a trip
over the V^ermillion Range, cruising for timber, taking along five men
and building homes and locating homestead claims. He is said to
have been the first timber cruiser to examine the localities where are
now numerous ore mines. At one time he had sixty timber claims
located. His plan was to place homesteaders on these claims, and
while he was searching out the most valuable timber tracts there
was another historic character, Captain Harvey, who was exploring
the same district in search of metals and minerals. Captain Harvey
is known in history as the man who made the first discovery of iron
ore in the Ely district, having located what was known as the
Pioneer Mine. This mine was on land comprised in one of Mr. Whiteside's
timber claim locations.
In early years Mr. Whiteside realized very little from the mineral
resources underlying his properties on the ranges. He owned
the superficial rights of the Chandler Mine property, and sold that
claim for $2,000, and received only $1,500 for the Sibley Mine. During
his homesteading explorations Mr. Whiteside and his party
walked all the distance of more than a hundred miles from Duluth to
what is now Ely, carrying packs on their backs. He enjoyed to the
full the rugged experiences of such work, and in endurance and
capacity for physical toil he had few equals.
During all these years he was engaged in logging operations. He
and his brother John in 1893 were associated with W. C. Winton and
S. G. Knox in the organization of the Knox Lumber Company, with
headquarters at Winton, Minnesota. ^Ir. \\'hiteside was superintendent
of the logging department of this company until 1898, when
he sold out to H. F. David of Duluth. W^hile he owned some of the
choicest tracts of stumpage in Northern ]Minnesota. Mr. Whiteside
gradually extended his interests to other timber districts. In 1899 he
acquired 13,000 acres of the big timber lands of Calaveras county,
California, and he still owns that immense tract. The purchase
included the Calaveras Grove and the Tuolumne Grove, containing