Happy Birthday!

· Jerry Hendrix

· Bobby McGee

· Karen Melton!!!!  

· Clint Slider

· Starkey Gunn

· Richard Smith

Volume 5, Issue 11

 

February 5, 2010

     Through the years we have seen many changes in logging from chopping trees down with axes to cutting them down with a feller buncher where the men never touch the tree. Several years ago logging was done with a axe and today you will not even find an axe on most logging jobs.  Since Ward Timber depends largely on the logging industry I thought it would be interesting to understand exactly what it took to be a logger and get the wood to the sawmill a 100 years ago.

     Early loggers and settlers cut timber near water and moved further away as the wood supply on that land was depleted.  The water made it easy to move timber to mills, but as loggers were forced to move inland, they needed to develop new methods of transporting their product.  One popular technique for hauling lumber was to use horses and oxen to drag logs over skid roads and rough tracks through the woods. Another method for moving lumber to market was by crude railroads constructed from the very lumber they were designed to transport. 

      When the first sawmills were established they were small and established in temporary facilities in the forest, then moved to new areas as the timber was exhausted. Log flumes, now known because of theme park rides, got their start as a way to move logs by manmade troughs.  Later, bigger mills were developed that were not portable and these were usually established in the lower reaches of a river, with the logs brought to them by floating downriver by log drivers. 

     Log drivers guided the logs down the river and ensured that logs drifted freely along the river.  This was a  very dangerous occupation, with the drivers standing on the moving logs and running from one to another.  When one caught on an obstacle and formed a logjam, someone had to free the offending log.  This required some understanding of physics, strong muscles, and extreme agility. Many log drivers lost their lives by falling and being crushed by the logs.

     Once the logs reached a main waterway, they were sent to sorting yards and then either to a mill, where they were transformed into a usable product or exported to places as far away as Australia and China.

     Throughout the 19th century and early decades of the 20th century, loggers lived in remote camps near their worksites.  Life was never luxurious in the logging camps.  Rough roads chopped out of the forest led to the hastily-constructed log buildings of the camp, which might house up to 100 men. The hours were lengthy, the work difficult, and the accommodations rough.  Camps were often infested with lice and other diseases and it wasn't uncommon for loggers to wear the same clothes for months on end.  Loggers worked in all-male crews and had their own vocabulary.  A "bucker" was someone who cut trees into manageable pieces after they'd been chopped down by the "faller," while the "whistle punk" relayed information between the worksite and the area where logs were dragged for loading. Lumberjacks were renowned for their toughness and strength, and a Saturday-night altercation in a saloon could have fatal results: a headstone in Seney's Boot Hill  cemetery simply states, "Died fighten". 

     Loggers relied on axes, handsaws and draft animals before the advent of steam engines and gas-powered vehicles, along with chainsaws and harvesting machines such as the feller-bunchers.  The transporting of logs to the sawmills has also changed over the years.  These tough conditions inspired an image of loggers as men of immense strength and might and even today the image is still forever etched in our minds. —LP

The Early Years of Logging

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