Hermansville and the floor that conquered America

Hermansville began the way a hundred U.P. towns did: a sawmill in the pines. Charles J.L. Meyer, a German-born cabinetmaker with a big sash-and-door factory in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, started buying Menominee County timberland in 1878 and built a mill town to feed his factory — the township here is named Meyer for him to this day. His Wisconsin Land & Lumber Company grew until it held nearly a hundred thousand acres across eight counties.

Then came the twist that set Hermansville apart. By around 1890 the pine was running out and the company was in financial trouble — so instead of folding, it turned to the hardwoods everyone else had left standing. At a time when practically no one used maple for flooring, the company built precision machinery to mill kiln-dried rock maple into perfectly matched flooring, stamped it with the IXL brand — say it out loud: “I excel” — and sold it to builders across a growing America. The museum folks will proudly tell you IXL maple is still underfoot in Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Inn. Meyer’s son-in-law and his descendants ran the company clear until 1943.

The best part is what’s left: the company’s 1881 office building still stands in Hermansville, its interior almost entirely original, right down to the desks and ledgers — now the IXL Historical Museum, open summer afternoons in season. It’s one of the most complete company-town time capsules in the U.P. Plan a visit at ixlmuseum.org.