Before the coming of the railroads in the 1850s, wooded groves provided most of the lumber needed to build anything and everything from farmhouses to courthouses.

Once virgin stands of oak, walnut, poplar and other types of trees were felled, cut to length and seasoned for a year, the logs had to be sawn. In the first half of the 19th century, the business of converting logs into lumber was a local enterprise, accomplished first by calloused hand, and then at sawmills powered - in successive order - by horse, water and steam.

In the pioneer era, most wood structures were built in the post-and-beam style using heavy timbers. In the 1820s and 1830s, the earliest years of settlement, the tool of choice was the whipsaw, a long, thin band of jagged-toothed steel. A framework of timber was placed over a pit and the log to be sawn rolled onto the timber. "One man then stood below [in the pit] and another above, and after marking the log with a chalk line the exercises commenced," related Etuzard Duis, a compiler of local pioneer lore.

George Price brought two whipsaws with him from Kentucky when he settled in McLean County back in 1833. Price and his brother Robert, alternately pulling and pushing the long blade, "sawed by hand from two to three hundred feet of lumber per day," noted Duis.

The sawmills were horse or ox-powered "tread" mills. Ezra Prince, who compiled a history of local mills more than 110 years ago, said Bloomington's first such sawmill dated to around 1833. It was an ox-driven setup on the 100 block of South Center Street operated by Dr. Isaac Baker and his son Seth.

Even though Bloomington is landlocked, watermills proved more effective than those powered by animal flesh. According to Prince, one of the earliest water-powered grist and sawmills in McLean County was located on Sugar Creek west of what's today St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery. Operated by the Rev. Ebenezer Rhodes and his son John, tragedy struck when another son drowned in the mill pond, prompting Ebenezer to dismantle the mill and sell the machinery.

John Patton had one of several sawmills on the Mackinaw River, though he became entangled in "vexatious and ruinous litigation" with neighbors who claimed the mill dam caused flooding on their property. Even so, the enterprise proved indispensable to the growth of the surrounding area. "The Patton mill was of great value to the community putting the slow and most laborious whipsaw out of commission," stated A.V. Pierson, who wrote another history of the area's grist and sawmills, "and made it possible for the settlers to get out the lumber for their buildings much cheaper and with far less labor than the old way."

Yet by the early 1850s, steam-powered mills were edging out water-powered counterparts. In June 1850, Bloomington steam mill operators John W. Ewing and William F. Flagg accepted as payment for jobs either half the timber sawn or 37 1/2 cents per 100 board feet.

Around this time, imported lumber from the pineries of Wisconsin and Michigan began making inroads into local markets. The July 23, 1851, Weekly Whig, a predecessor to The Pantagraph, included an advertisement for the firm S.P Higginson of Pekin, which offered an assortment of "Green Bay lumber," including boards, flooring and shingles. In all likelihood, this lumber was first sent to Chicago and then carried down the Illinois & Michigan Canal and Illinois River to Pekin. Area farmers would haul corn by the wagonload to the distilleries of Peoria and return with North Woods pine.

Railroads arrived in Bloomington in 1853, and pine lumber started pouring into Central Illinois. In 1858 alone, more than 7 million board feet arrived into the city via rail.

This lightweight, relatively durable material had far-reaching influence in architecture and construction methods. Balloon framing, in which homes were built using 2-by 4-foot sawn pine boards, supplanted the use of much heavier, locally sawn timbers. This made homes both easier to build and more affordable. Some 150 years later, most residential construction still relies on the principles of balloon framing.