Yesterday and Today

Above: A drawing after an old photograph of early big-wheel logging in the West.

SINCE THE DAYS OF LEIF ERICSON

FRED C. SIMMONS.

LOGGING was probably the first commercial activity of white men on this continent. Old Norse accounts tell that Leif Ericson went to the shores of a land across the North Atlantic and brought back a cargo of timber some time about A. D. 1000. There are references to other voyagers who also visited that land and brought back timber. There is record of a timber-laden ship, homeward bound from "Markland" to Iceland, that was wrecked in 1347 just before it reached port.

Later explorers were also greatly impressed by the timber that they saw on the North American shores. In 1605 Capt. John Weymouth of the British Royal Navy nosed his ship into one of the harbors of what is now the coast of Maine. His men cut some samples of northern white pine timber and he took these back to England with him. This pine is still known as Weymouth pine in the British Isles.

When the colonists arrived they found timber growing to the water's edge. They had to cut trees to make room for their homes and for their fields. Houses, barns, stockades, and bridges were built of logs that were everywhere readily available. The small, round timbers were preferred because they could be handled easily. The date of the first sawmill is a matter of debate; some contend that the settlers in Virginia were using one some time between 1608 and 1620. There is an authentic record of a sawmill that was established in 1634 near the site of South Berwick, in Maine.

Captain Weymouth's efforts to inform his countrymen about the quality of the timber in North America were highly successful especially with the Royal Navy. Mast timbers were soon in heavy demand. White pine from the New England shores and yellow pine from the Colonies to the south began to move to England in ships built specially for this trade. Depletion of the supply of tall trees on the Baltic shores made the English apprehensive about the preservation of their new-found supply. Suitable trees in the New England forests were marked with the King's broad arrow and thus reserved for the exclusive use of the Royal Navy.

The colonists used logging equipment and methods of rudimentary character. The early mills and shipping docks were mostly on tidewater. Heavy stands of timber grew on stream banks or on slopes from which logs could readily be put in water by hand and then floated to mills or shipside. Timber that was more distant from the watercourses and hardwood logs that would not float had to be skidded either by the brute strength of men or by use of the oxen that pulled the farmers' plows. The colonists soon found that skidding could be done most easily on ice and snow, and wintertime became the traditional season for such work. Scandinavian and Dutch colonists added their skill to the more scanty experience of the English.

NEW METHODS have developed, although some of the pioneers' practices are still used throughout the country principally on small jobs. The ax and the ox team are primitive logging tools, but they can still be found at work in the woods. The ax has been improved in design and quality of its steel. Modern metallurgy has enabled the manufacturer to make a top-grade tool every time, something not possible when ax-heads were forged by hand; some were good and some were poor. When a logger got hold of a really good ax he guarded it jealously and might even take it to bed with him. The crosscut saw, introduced about 75 years ago, was at first a crude cutting tool.

The modern crosscut saw is made of excellent steel, holds its set and cutting edges well, and runs freely in the cut. The peavey, invented about 85 years ago by a blacksmith in Stillwater, Maine, has made the work of rolling logs by hand easier and safer. The pulp hook, the bow saw, the explosive wedge, and even the tractor, the power saw, and the motortruck are becoming commonplace throughout the country, even on small logging jobs.

But it is in the bigger operations that revolution after revolution in logging methods has taken place. Big-time logging had its origin in Maine, where heavy stands of pine and spruce, watercourses leading to good harbors on tidewater, and long, cold winters when little else could be done provided a favorable environment. The Machias, the Penobscot, the Kennebec, and the Androscoggin watersheds were the nursery from which came a new technique of logging and a tribe of loggers that later fanned out to other timber regions across the continent.

Maine loggers developed the art of chip-chopping in felling trees and in cutting them into logs. They learned to take advantage of gravity and snow and ice in skidding the logs to watercourses. They developed the art of driving the logs down the streams to sorting booms at tidewater. Living in rough camps far back from the towns and farming country, they were a tough and hardy brood now well celebrated in song and story.

But their very energy and efficiency in time brought about depletion of the accessible large virgin pine and spruce of that State.

THE CENTER of large-scale lumbering began to move westward first to the headwaters of the Connecticut, then the Hudson, and then the Susquehanna and the Ohio. Rafting was developed on the more placid waters of the Susquehanna and Ohio, not only to keep the logs together but also to keep afloat the choice hardwoods that were bound into the rafts with the pine. Winter logging and stream driving were developed still further in the Lake States to keep pace with the increasing capacity of the sawmills and the ever-expanding demand for lumber. There, too, the first logging railroad came into use, and cable skidding was developed.

As the virgin timber stands of the Lake States neared depletion, the tide of the lumber-industry migration split.

Some of it moved into the flatland pine stands of the South. Some of it moved across the Rocky Mountains to the great coniferous forests of the Pacific slope. In those regions, especially in the West, the use of the cable skidder and the logging railroad reached its apogee. The volume of timber cut and moved to the mills by those methods was astounding. They were, however, destructive, wasteful, short-sighted.

Along the path of the migrations, the pioneer loggers were joined by hardy men from other parts of the country and by a large number of immigrants from abroad Scandinavians, French Canadians, Austrians, men from the Balkans and from Russia. All contributed to the growing store of logging lore.

The French Canadians introduced the travois or dray an idea that they had borrowed from the Indians of the Plains. The Austrians brought in the log chute and slide for use on steep slopes. The idea of cableways came from Switzerland. The English developed the crawler track, used first in the steam log-hauler in Maine.

Some of the best known lumber companies operating today on the west coast and in the South originated in Maine, in Pennsylvania, and in the Lake States.

As THE TIDE of logging advanced across the country, and then eddied back into the Rockies, the southern swamps, the Appalachians, and the wilderness areas of northern Maine and New Hampshire, there were always ingenious loggers who kept on inventing new devices and others who were ready and eager to try them out.

But there also have been loggers determined to resist any change of the methods that they knew to be tried and true. Men still living can remember, when the crosscut saw was introduced, how loggers, proud of their chip-chopping skill, left camp rather than use the new tool. In recent years the introduction of the power chain saw was met by similar resistance. Crews have been known purposely to leave a power saw where it would be smashed by a falling tree in order that they might resume the use of their familiar crosscut saws.

But still the tide of change goes on. In region after region horses replaced oxen because they are faster and more intelligent. It is interesting to watch a good woods-wise horse as he goes about his skidding job, often without reins or word of command. He comes up the skid trail, turns around in front of a log, and waits for the teamster to hook the skid chain. Then he moves away down the trail without guidance or command, swinging wide, or even squaring away on the curves to keep his load in the trail and to avoid getting it stuck on stumps and roots. Right up to the skidway he goes, stops with the load in the correct position, and waits for it to be unhooked.