William F. Dalrymple was born at Sugar Grove, Warren County, Pennsylvania in 1825. He attended the academy at Jamestown, New York, not far north of his home and later taught school and served as county superintendent of schools in Warren County.
A few notations in Dalrymple's memorandum book in 1848 show that he had financial interests in a local saw mill and store at that time. His investments expanded rapidly, both in amount and area. In a statement prepared on February 2, 1878, he itemized a portion of his property holdings. Those in Pennsylvania, consisting of farm and pine lands, mills, city lots, dwellings, together with money due him in that state, he valued at $103,700. In addition, he owned city lots in Milwaukee worth $124,000 and other lands in the vicinity of St. Paul and Bayfield, Wisconsin, the value of all of it totaling, he estimated, $245,700. On these properties there was an indebtedness of about $75,000.
This estimate did not include what was probably at the time his largest speculative venture. A couple of years earlier he had joined with his younger brother Oliver in the latter's vast wheat farming enterprises in the Red River Valley. Oliver Dalrymple had experimented with hard wheat growing on his large farm near St. Paul and in 1875 had extended his operations to the lands just west of Fargo, North Dakota, which were opening up to settlement with the building of the Northern Pacific Railroad. George W. Cass, president of that railroad; Benjamen P. Cheney who had made his fortune in the express business; the wealthy Grandin Brothers, bankers of western Pennsylvania; and others associated with Oliver Dalrymple in the ownership and operation of thousands of acres of wheat lands in Cass and Traill counties, and the name of Dalrymple had come to be synomyous with the idea of "bonanza farming" in the Northwest.
The ownership of huge wheat farms forced upon the attention of the proprietors the problem of marketing their grain, and this in turn led to a consideration of transportation routes. Dalrymple's secretary and executor of his estate, H. C. Hale of Madison, states that the two brothers disagreed on the more satisfactory solution of the question. The younger brother favored the Red River route but William F. Dalrymple insisted that the natural direction was by rail to some Lake Superior port, and thence by lake steamers to Eastern lake ports or even the Atlantic, thus anticipating the much discussed Great Lakes-St. Lawrence waterways project.
It was in furtherance of this belief, according to Mr. Hale, that William F. Dalrymple began to take an active interest in the development of his properties at Bayfield, on Lake Superior. He planned to build and operate a road, the Bay-field Harbor and Great Western Railway, which would connect with one or more of the larger roads leading to the West. The only part of his plan that ever materialized was the establishment of a short lumber line north from Bayfield, the Bayfield Transfer Railway Company, but the project absorbed most of his time, money, and attention to the end of his life.
The Bayfield Transfer Railway Company was incorporated on July 26, 1883 but for various reasons work on the road was not commenced for over seven years. Stock was sold in the company but Dalrymple retained a controlling interest. In 1891 Dalrymple, who continued to make Pittsfield, Pennsylvania his residence, established a permanent office at Bayfield, placing Herbert C. Hale of Jamestown, New York, distantly related to the Dalrymples, in charge. Hale became general manager of the road when it began operations. Dalrymple's health began to fail early in the 1890s, and from 1896 to his death in 1901, he conducted his business affairs as well as he could from hospitals in St. Paul and Racine, and his home in Pittsfield.
According to Mr. Hale, levels were run for the survey of the road in 1891 and in April 1898 trains began to run. The line led from Bayfield six miles north along the lake shore, through the Red Cliff Indian Reservation. The road carried freight and passengers, but in later years, Mr. Hale says, it was leased to a lumber company, becoming more profitable to its owners than when they had operated it themselves. In 1936 the road was in decay, the bridges down, the ties rotted, and the rails rusted.
About the year 1878 Dalrymple acquired a controlling interest in the Milwaukee and Dubuque Railroad. This was a successor to the Milwaukee and Beloit Railroad, a farm mortgage line of the decade of the fifties that had never built a single mile of track. Elaborate plans were renewed for financing the road. A reorganization of the company in 1887 under the title of the Milwaukee, Peoria, and St. Louis Railroad indicated expanding ambitions and a change of route, but no portion of the road was put into operation during Dalrymple's life-time.
