Wisconsin Valley
Improvement Company
Improvement Company
Why is it Called Burnt Rollways?
Burnt Rollways got its name from an event that took place during the lumbering days of the late 1800s.
A group of lumberjacks got mad when a shoestring jobber couldn't pay them after they'd stacked his timber on a device called a rollway along Ninemile Creek. The logs were to have been rolled into the melt-swollen creek in spring and floated to a sawmill. Since they didn't get paid, the lumberjacks burned the logs on the rollway in protest. Hence the name "Burnt Rollways." As the story goes, the men reasoned that if they weren't going to get paid, neither would the man they worked for. The rollway they burned reportedly lies submerged in the creek about a mile upstream from our present boat hoist.