Station: Beechwood, MI

Beechwood was settled in 1882 as a small farming community eight miles west of Iron River. The C&NW railroad arrived in town in 1887 and brought a wave of settlers. A branch line was built to the lumbering town of Atkinson and a wye was established at the beginning of this branch at a nearby location known as Hazel Junction. [Iron County Historical Society information]

Notes

Time Line

1887. The new division of the C&NW known as the Iron River railroad, which runs from Iron River to Watersmeet, a distance of thirty-six miles, was formally opened on Thursday. The stations are Iron River, Beechwood, Hemlock, Elmwood, Tamarack and Watersmeet. [PHTH-1887-0902]

1890. A couple of years ago a party of Marinette capitalists conceived the idea of making a trout pond of that small sheet of water, near Beechwood station of the C&NW railway, known as Larson's Lake. They accordingly secured the adjacent land and forbid everybody fishing in the lake. It is quite a question whether they can control the exclusive right to fish there and some of our local sportsmen may take a notion to test it in the courts. A few days since, Messrs. Carney and Merryman caught and carried away quite a number of handsome trout and that will be the basis of a suit to test their exclusive rights. They may, however, be convicted of a violation of the state game law, even if it is held to be private property. [DD-1890-0301]

1913. F. Gibbs & Son have 14 forties of hardwood land to log. The timber lies along the Atkinson branch. A two-mile railroad has been built into the timber. The logs are loaded onto regular size flat cars which are pulled to the branch line by an engine owned and operated by Gibbs & Son. The cars are picked up by a Northwestern switch crew and brought to Iron River, made into a train and taken wherever desired. The tract contain several years logging and will not only be a good thing for Iron River but also for Gibbs & Son.