The woolen mill at Reedsburg was built in 1881 along the Baraboo
River. Two years later it was acquired by William French, an easterner who intended to dismantle the mill and sell the equipment. However, French changed his mind and operated the mill in partnership with several Reedsburg residents until 1892.
The mill was a modest operation in its early years with only two
sets of carding machines and ten looms. By 1899 the capacity had
more than doubled as it was operating four sets of carding machines
and thirty-two broad looms. The 1890's also saw the construction of
an office and warehouse facility and an addition to the mill building. This growth prompted a change in the structure of the business which in 1892 was incorporated with a capital of $100,000.
In 1902 the Appleton Woolen Mill corporation purchased the company. Under Appleton ownership an@ adjacent feed mill and water rights to the dam were purchased, a new dam was built, and in 1910, the entire operation was converted to electricity. The mill continued to prosper under a series of Appleton managers: George Dunham, Fred Klebart, George Seagraves, William Ehlert, Louis Anderson, and Ralph Wirth.
The Reedsburg operation, while standard for a mill of its type, was
not typical of the textile industry as a whole. In most branches of the industry a mill tends to specialize in one stage of the cloth making process, but at Reedsburg all phases for converting raw material to finished cloth were carried out. This set-up enabled the designers to control all stages of the manufacturing process. At Reedsburg, and any other woolen mill, the basic sequence for making a woolen fabric consists of three steps: carding, spinning, and weaving. Carding transforms the tangled, matted wool into fluffy uniform
strands, about as fat as a pencil, called roving. The second step, spinning, twists the roving into yarn, and finally the yarn is entered into a loom and woven into cloth. A fourth operation, dyeing, may be performed at any point in the process depending on the desired effect. Wool may be dyed before carding, spun yarn may be dyed, or the finished cloth may be dyed. At the Reedsburg mill dyeing was done mainly at the first and last stages.
The mill wove a wide variety of woolen fabrics ranging from blankets to dress goods. In the late 1950's Reedsburg designers were turning out about 90 designs a year, and by 1963 the number had risen to 250. Agents such as the W.A. Landry Company sold most of Reedsburg's cloth in the Eastern fashion markets to be made into ready-to-wear garments and, in turn, sent to the mill suggestions concerning new trends in styles and colors. Both Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward were among the mill's major customers, and the fabrics themselves are a mirror of the taste of average Americans over the years.
In 1954 the Appleton corporation decided to relinquish its interest in the Reedsburg plant in order to consolidate and concentrate on manufacturing papermakers' felts. At this time the Reedsburg mill employed approximately 180 people with an annual payroll of nearly $450,000. Faced with the possible shutdown of the plant, the Reedsburg community took steps to purchase the mill. Employees scoured the city selling stock at $100 a share and with pledges of $10,000 each from two local businessmen, the $75,000 selling price was met. Ralph Wirth, who had been associated with the mill since the early 1930's as a designer and then manager became president, and the company was named the Reedsburg Woolen Mill.
The mill continued operating for thirteen more years. A fire in 1961 and Wirth's sudden death in 1964 were costly blows, but the most serious problem was increased competition from Southern mills, foreign imports, and synthetic fibers. In 1967 the board of directors declared bankruptcy and in June of that year the mill, which employed nearly 200 people at the time, closed.
