Schroeder Lumber Company Bunkhouse
The camp had a reputation for good living conditions, fair wages, and good food. Lumberjacks ate a lot, and if the food wasn't to their liking, they would leave and seek employment with a different company. The sleeping accommodations were spartan, with rows of wooden bunk beds topped with mattresses stuffed with straw, hay, or evergreen boughs, along with pillows stuffed with grain and straw. Author Cathy Wurzer speculates that the smell in the bunkhouse was rather "ripe", given the smell of wet woolen clothes being hung up to dry and the housing of sweaty workers living in close quarters.
For a time, the Schroeder Lumber Company was one of the largest lumber retailers in the United States. The company owned and operated every step in the lumber supply chain, from cutting down trees to shipping the logs to milling and manufacturing wood products. Its owner, John Schroeder, had logging operations in Lake County and Cook County in Minnesota, as well as northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Owner John Schroeder died in 1905, and although his sons ran the firm for several decades afterward, the company went out of business in 1939 and the Milwaukee lumberyard was closed.