Lake Mohawksin (Lincoln County, WI)

To Stark, "from 1858 until 1886 the only residents of what today is Tomahawk were Germain Bouchard and his family." They operated a bar and ferry service. "There are conflicting opinions as to how the subsequent community received its name." Some claim the town was named after a Native hunting ground. Others believe "a neighboring lake that resembled an axe blade" inspired the name of what grew up around Bouchard's settlement. Stark describes the boom and bust cycle of the big cut, the Boom company, dam, sawmill and railroad... "the settlement grew at a startling rate." Four mills were built between 1886 and 1890. Then, "[w]hen the surrounding timber ran out, this boom collapsed as suddenly as it began." In the twenty-first century Tomahawk has small scale manufacturing and assembly on Kaphaem Road. There is also a paper mill and packaging company and power plant that rely on dams. This collection ignores the hundreds of years of Ojibwe, French and American history that inform one's conception of place. Building upon the 1924 Jones/McVean history [tomahawkpioneers] has updated the narrative for the internet.

The Federal Writers Project describes a similar origin story: "Up to 1886 there was only a lonely tavern here, kept by Germain Bouchard. Fur traders and Indians stopped overnight at this outpost, which was called Tomahawk because one of the near-by lakes vaguely resembled an ax blade." The assumption is this is Lake Mohawksin. The FWP describes the "half-dozen lakelike sloughs" which are man made products of damming the river. Mohawksin is upstream of these dams. The most apparent impoundment in the area is the Spirit Flowage.

sources