The Hall-Raynor Stopping Place, built in about 1874, is significant for its historic associations with the logging industry in the Chippewa Valley and as a rare example of a type of enterprise that was very common to early pioneer transportation. The building is a good example of early large log construction and is also significant for its associations with the area’s agricultural resettlement.

The building first became known as a stopping place between 1876 and 1878 when it was owned by William and Samuel Hall. However, the previous owner had been Charles C. Drew, who had purchased the property in 1873. It is believed that Drew constructed the original portion of the house in 1874, and the addition was added after the building was converted to a stopping place, either by the Halls or the subsequent owner, Alfred Raynor.

When Raynor, together with W.E. McCord and A.J. Hayward, bought the house from the Halls in 1878, the logging industry was in full swing throughout the densely forested Chippewa Valley. Several lumbering camps were located nearby, including one across the river from the Raynor Place. A steady flow of trappers, loggers and rivermen, using both the supply tote roads and the river, assured a stopping place a good business. More than a dozen such roadside taverns and inns were located on a 20-mile stretch of the river on either side of Raynor’s Place, most operated by Civil War veterans, like Raynor, who had moved from the east in the late 1860s or early 1870s. Raynor later came into full possession of the property.

The average price for a meal was two bits (25£), as was a night’s lodging. As many as 150 men a night took advantage of Raynor’s hospitality and he later recalled: “You had to step high at night after the stoppers retired, as 100 often slept on the floor.” Jesters and musicians were usually on the scene for entertainment, and Raynor’s guests included such lumber barons as Fred Weyerheuser, William Carson, and Edward Rutledge. Heavy timber cutting continued through the end of the 19th century. During one winter as many as 20 million feet of logs were put into the river within three miles of Raynor’s place. The timber would be floated 86 miles down to Chippewa Falls where one of the world’s largest lumber mills would ready it for transport to the midwest’s developing cities. When the mill finally closed in 1911, the demand for river stopping places vanished also. The Raynor Place soon became simply the Raynor Farm and was purchased in 1917 by the Wisconsin Colonization Company.

This company was the largest of many such land concerns associated with Benjamin Faast, a nationally recognized leader in the colonization movement. The goal of the land reclamation program was to promote a carefully supervised resettlement of the forest cutover areas, combining modern agricultural techniques with long-term credit to make small farm life attractive to potential settlers.

The Raynor Place became one of the demonstration farms for the 60,000 acres of land the Colonization Company owned in southern Sawyer County. Being located adjacent to the Old Chippewa Road bridge arid across the river from the model community of Ojibwa, the Raynor Place was an excellent location to keep the various herds of stock that were being delivered to the new settlers, Built by the Colonization Company on the site of a former logging camp, Ojibwa was a planned community with zoning restrictions and design guidelines. Envisioned by Faast as an ideal village, it never developed beyond two dozen model homes and businesses by the time the company folded in 1930. Since then the Raynor Place has been used as a private residence. Architecturally, the Hall-Raynor Stopping Place is an example of the early large residences common to the area. Built of hand—hewn squared timbers covered with clapboards, the bottom most tamarack or cedar logs were set on a “mudsill” foundation. The mudsill combined packed mud and occasional log block support posts. As a result of this quick construction practice and the wetness of the floodplain, the bottom two tiers of the Raynor Place’s foundation are badly rotted and the structure itself is sagging. The house remains one of the few such structures still in existence and the only known stopping place left in this area. In addition, it is the oldest known surviving structure in Sawyer County. Its external appearance (except for the enclosure of the front porch) and riverfront site are identical to photographs taken in 1917.