History of Logging in Northern Wisconsin

[woodroe]

This just popped up on Youtube a couple days ago.
A little long but lots to cover over the course of 1882 -1935.
Lots of pictures, good presentation , from oxen to steam donkeys to
steam powered trains, log rustling. other logging terminology I hadn't heard before.
3' wide planks 24' L at the end.
If you like logging history you will like this .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw5RclSjs5Q

[beenthere]

woodroe
Thanks for finding that. Very well done, at a northern WI historical club meeting invited-speaker with slide show.

[upnut]

Good timing! Wife just brought home a book from the library for me....Daylight In The Swamp by Robert W. Wells

"A boisterous account of lumberjacks, lynchings, barroom brawls, madams & timber thieves in the wild northwoods of Wisconsin, Michigan, & Minnesota"

Should be entertaining, between the two of them.

Scott B.

[doc henderson]

thanks, beenthere.  I had time this am and watched it stem to stern.  I have a few of those pics and thought that is crazy.  glad to hear they were staged for a photo op on Sundays.  

[sharp edge]

Thank-You

This really hit home. My family moved to the Hayward area in the late 1930 and cut hemlock for the farmers barns a 100 miles south of here. They used it green.


SE 

[Machinebuilder]

Thanks I am going to watch it later,

My Grandpa grew up a bit south of there in Curtis, WI

I recall a little about him working in logging.

[Machinebuilder]

I watched it last night.

There are a lot of interesting pictures, and the progress of logging and transporting logs is interesting.

I would like to visit the museums that are talked about.

[Resonator]

Neat video!
Amazing to think of all the back breaking work the loggers did by hand. In a time before skidders and trucks, with just horses and steam engines to move the logs out. A lot of the towns along the Wisconsin river started as logging towns, the river was used as a highway to move the logs to mills. They would cut timber through the cold winter months, and them float them downstream when the ice was off in spring. The city of Wausau near me was first called "Big Bull Falls", because of the rapids the men had to float the logs through.

[sharp edge]

(My Grandpa grew up a bit south of there in Curtis, )

We stop their at Curtis,wi for dinner "Abblyland" great place.

Dad didn't like steam engines...He would say, "cut lumber all morning" "fight fire all afternoon"

[woodroe]

12 hour days , .12 cents an hour, a bed of hay to sleep on and 3 meals a day.
 No alcohol, well not suppose to be any but .....
6-8000 calories a day and all the men are skinny.
Swampers was a new to me term, guys who went ahead and peeled the
bark off trees where it was to be cut before the tree cutters came along. Something about making
the sawing easier.
Tough bunch of guys .

[Machinebuilder]

Abbyland is a good place to eat. I stopped there a couple years ago.

I was taking the scenic route home from Wyoming. I decided to go through Curtis.
I found the farm Grandpa grew up on, it was being rented by an old order Mennonite family. The house looked very similar to some pictures my Mom has from 1935.

I also found the Old Norwegian Lutheran Church, where Grandpa's Mom and her Mom are buried, along with several other distant relatives.
His Mom and Her mom were imigrants from Norway.

[woodroe]

More early  Wisconsin logging history

[beenthere]

Those swamps grow cranberries now. 

[woodroe]

Amazing how much train track was laid in that region, and the number 
of sawmills that were setup and moved around.
One of the mills could saw 60' logs ! Timbers used for bridges mostly. 

[Resonator]

Railroads were THE form of transportation, if you wanted to move large loads of materials over land that's what you used. A lot of those logging line side tracks into the woods were just temporary. Just a dirt path with fresh green cut logs cut off the land they were logging laid for ties, and light weight rails spiked down. When the timber had been harvested off, they pulled them up to use elsewhere.
Back in the 90's I was big into railroads, and followed a 1923 Wisconsin RR map searching for the train lines throughout the state. The original railroad track through Mather was abandoned in the early 1900's, and Hwy 173 is built on the RR grade from Valley jct. to Babcock. 

[fluidpowerpro]

What I find amazing was the relatively short amount of time it took for them to get up and running.The owners must have been very driven and had good sources of capital to finance everything necessary before the first boards were even cut.
Once they did get set up and running, the overall time they were operating was relatively short. Back then they had thousands of acres cut down and moved the mill before we would have issued the permits, etc.

[Resonator]

The lumber businessmen back then built up their business with a good market for their product they were producing, and little to no regulations to have to follow. They also had armies of men willing to work for relatively low pay. Also By having the mills by railroad lines, they could ship loads of lumber to tap into the big city markets. And after the great Chicago fire there was a big demand for lumber, a lot what was cut in Wisconsin went to rebuilding.