A Raft Pilot's Log cont. THE LAST LOG 291 "There is a picture hanging in the Gazette office, showing the old boom- master, Frank McGray, hitching the last logthat came through the Saint Croix boom; the log was a large one, scaling, I would say, five hundred or six hundred feet and this closed operatons at the boom for all time; that was on the twelfth day of June, 1914; on this day also, the last meal was served in the old cook house and among those that sat down to dinner that day were Mr.McGray, James R. Brennan, then the boom master, D.J. McCuish, Eugene O'Neal, Rev, John McCoy, then pastor ot the First Presby- terian Church, R.S. Davis, W.C. Masterman and several others, whose names escape me at this writing."- Stillwater Gazette, April 2, 1928. There has been much discussion as to when rafting ceased at West Newton where the M.R.L. Company handled the great output of logs from the Chippewa. I could not harmonize the positive but conflicting statements of numerous persons to whom I appealed for information and was greatly pleased when I finally got a letter from Mr. Andrew Thompson of Nelson, Wisconsin, which closed the discussion. Mr. Thompson had been a foreman at West Newton 292 until Mr. Edward Douglas, the superintendent, left for the west in 1904, when he took charge of the job until the final wind up. Mr. Thompson writes under the date of January 13, 1929, that no logs were put past Chippewa falls after 1904; that in autumn of tha year(1904) they splashed and drove everything in the river and had teams haul in from the bottom and clear the islands and sloughs. In this way they had thirty million feet to raft out in 1905 and the last full raft was taken by one of Weyerhauser and Denkmann's boats late in July or August first. Some logs had broken away or got loose from number one and with a small crew he caught most of them in Fisher Slough and fitted them up so they could be taken to Winona. Then they pulled the piling and rafted it and some of the booms. These and the picked up logs were taken to Laird and Norton's mill at Winona by the steamer 'Frontenac' in August. The chains, wire and wood were also sold in Winona. The buildings and their contents were sold to people living near, in 1905. The steamer 'E. Douglas' and the pile driver were sold in 1906, and there was nothing left to indicate the activities of the company that had turned out as high as six hundred million feet of logs in one season, sorted,scaled and rafted up in good shape ready for boats o hitch into and take down river. 1904 was the last full season at West Newton, 1905- 30,000,000 feet was the output at West Newton, and the clean-up of logs, piles and booms.