Historic Logging and Milling Photos

[SwampDonkey]

Same with loading pulpwood, all by hand and it had to be peeled before hand. Dad said he did it as late as the 60's, it was his wood and all that labour for $20 a cord. The last river drive was in the 60's here. Today a weir in the river can still be seen above the Beechwood dam where logs were to be gathered, it never got used. It's not far from here.

[StorminN]

Not completely manual, there was a machine, a conveyor elevator type rig that lifted the boards to the guys stacking on top of the pile. I either have photos or a video clip here somewhere of one in action. I've just got to remember where.

Oooh, that would be cool to see...

-N.

[celliott]

If anyone has read the book Tall trees, Tough men, this is an excellent book on old time logging camps and the historic timber industry of the northeast.  I reccomend it to all who have an interest in the subject. :P

[SwampDonkey]

My grandfather lived through it. There were times there was no camp, just a lean-to or a shed where you stayed with the horses. One time my grandfather said all he had was a barrel and his Hudson Bay sleeping robe. No wonder he was afflicted by the Rheumatism.

[Jeff]

I came across this outstanding collection tonight on the University of Minnesota Duluth website.

http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/Buffalo/PB39.html

[Bibbyman]

I was doing some cleanup work the other day and  came across this old picture of Uncle Chick's steam engine powered circle mill.  You can see the back of Uncle Chick's neck just to the left of the guy with the T-shirt.  The picture was taken about 1970.  I'm not sure who the two other guys are.

[Chuck White]

Real nice pics and stories.

Excellent post Jeff.

My Grandfather (mom's dad) was born in a lumber camp in the Adirondack Mountains here in NY.
He grew up helping his mom with kitchen duties and later became an entertainer (singer/story teller) at the camp.

We have a museum here that tells a lot of the history with thousands of pictures and stories.
The Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake.

[SwampDonkey]

Driving dam at the head of the left hand branch of the Tobique River (Little Tobique). Sagamook Mountain in the back ground, the site of Adam Moores Guide camps. Now part of Mnt Carleton Provincial Park since 1967. Logs where drove down to the Fraser saw mill in Plaster Rock where there has been a mill now for 125 years. Ever since the rail road was pushed into Plaster Rock, just a spur line from Perth for 25 miles. When I was a kid the remains of the dam were still there and a bridge crossed over it. There were also remains of the dam on the Pokiok Stream, a tributary of the Tobique. Timbering in the area had been going on long before Moore built his camps. One time these logs would have gone down river for 180 miles to Fredericton where Fraser's were first operating. The Little Tobique is narrow, but very deep.

[Meadows Miller]

I was doing some cleanup work the other day and  came across this old picture of Uncle Chick's steam engine powered circle mill.  You can see the back of Uncle Chick's neck just to the left of the guy with the T-shirt.  The picture was taken about 1970.  I'm not sure who the two other guys are.

Gday Bibby Thats a nice piece of family history you have there I assume thats the same mill you dragged home from out  in the paddock awhile back  ??? thanks for sharing Mate

Regards Chris

[Texas Ranger]

1961, southern Missouri

[cinnabar]

We found this in a box of photos, was taken about 1894-95, Langley & Alderson engine out of Merrill WI.I believe.  My GreatGrandfather is second from the left on the logs.  He was about 18 or 19.  Hope to find some more the rest of the boxes.

[northwoods1]

More early photos from my area and I apologize that they have deteriorated so much. All of these a friend of mine brought me and allowed me to copy with my now obsolete 35mm and copy stand... now the elderly lady he had borrowed them from are gone and so are the originals. These are really early photos from this area. I like the photos of the Wannigan which was the cook shack that floated down the river with the drivers, see those guys standing there on it? Talk about a rough looking bunch of characters :D :D :D

And the pics where they are running the Dales on the Wolf River... that spot is just a few miles away from me and they were just doing it for fun I am sure. You can see in another photo the log jam there which was not for fun... one hell of a lot of timber was floated down that river and it built the city of Chicago and other developing communities of the time. Now it is a destination for "tubers" who like to float down the river when the weather is nice. And white water canoe lovers who enjoy a challenge. But the river drivers did it for a living... they battled with this river to get the logs down to the sawmills... A lot f them are buried on the banks of the river with no headstone.

[SwampDonkey]

Nice pictures.

There wasn't much for photos that I've seen about logging in these parts, but a little history.

Old "Boss" Alexander Gibson was an old timber baron here in NB and also had cotton mills. He pushed the railroad throughout rural NB to access timber lands. With George Stephen and Donald Smith, he got financing for the joining of NB rail road to Montreal on the CP rail. Stephen was a railroad tycoon and Smith (his cousin) was a HBC factor that became it's governor. Both became rich and sat in the house of Lords in England known as 1st Baron Mount Stephen and Lord Strathcona, respectively. However Boss Gibson died poor, the depression bankrupted him as he gave his wealth away to help the poor that lost their jobs in Marysville (a suburb of Fredericton). There is little record of the Boss, no paperwork and pictures if any are rare. I think a lot of stuff got destroyed. Stephen built a fishing lodge up on the Gaspe, his niece turned into the Reford Gardens (it's a botanical park you can see now) and Smith built a fishing lodge here in NB on the Tobique River for salmon fishing. He never made it to the lodge though, before it burned down. Lord "Maxwell Aitkin" Beaverbrook, a media baron and Churchill's cabinet minister for the war effort in England, sold the Gibson's railroad land (1000 acres per track mile) to K.C. Irving in 1946, who was a baron himself of timber and oil, and news media. Beaverbrook was also from NB and his name is all over the capital city. His money basically built the University of New Brunswick you see today. Those old Scotsmen became filthy rich.

Most members of the family had cameras, but were more inclined to take a picture of a dog, and not so much of a train or a horse hauling wood. Too busy working I guess. :D

[slowzuki]

I'll add a little note about log runs on the Saint John River.  On our property there used to stand an inn that was built in the 1800's.  Men travelling the shore on the log drive would stay there annually.  When the man who we bought the land from sold it to us, he explained the men working the log drive on the water were a different sort, they were paid more, in cash, and ranged from murderers looking to disappear to just desperate men in need of money.  They frequently died or disappeared during the drive, and locals kept the young ladies away from this group when they came though.

Locals were hired to push logs off the shore to keep the mess of logs moving.  We didn't get many jams in this area of the river so he didn't know much about that.

In my conversations with Jim Irving, he remembered working during the log drive and passing through Woodstock, NB.  I'm not sure in what capacity he was involved, the log drives must have stopped when he was fairly young.  The building of power dams on the river stopped the log drive.

[Mooseherder]

There was a few Mills along the river.  One was in Van Buren.  There are a lot of photos at the library there.  Just southEast of Van Buren the river dumps into Grand Falls N.B. The logs probably wouldn't have survived the torment of the Wells and rocks.  Quite a few miles of river left from there to support some more Mills though until it dumps into the Ocean.

[SwampDonkey]

About '66 was the end of the drive. Irving built some piers above Beechwood dam before it's construction, near Clearview, that never got used when the government stopped the drive.

J. K. Irving's wife, Jean, wrote a book about Rev. R. H. Nicholson from up near Woodstock (Riceville), who was also a painter and teacher. Many of the paintings are of horse logging and camp life, which Jim Irving commissioned Nicholson to paint in 1960 from his memories. The Irvings own many of his paintings, some are at the Faculty of Forestry at U of Toronto. A lot of the scenery you can tell is from Carleton County, you look at them and know exactly were they were if you know the area up along the river valley in the Woodstock area. He would teach Mrs Irving to paint when she enrolled in his classes in 1977. The folks in the family here knew the Rev. because he was a Wesleyan preacher and involved in Bethany (a Wesleyan Bible college), which was founded in Woodstock in 1945 and moved to Sussex in 1966.

I have a copy of the book here signed by Mrs Irving and Rev. Nicholson. My aunt in Sussex, now 80, is a retired teacher and she paints as well. She gave this copy to us.

This is one of Rev. Nicholson's paintings called "Icing at Night".



I don't know if anyone has seen this, but my grandfather has done this work years ago. They iced the roads to make it easier sledding the wood out of the woods. My grandfather  (mom's dad) would have been the same age as the Rev. born 1909. It was dad's side of the family that has the church ties to the Rev. But dad's mom had uncles that were woods contractors or teamster with hired men and camps they built.

[clearcut]

The University of California has digitized the Fritz-Metcalf Photograph Collection and put it online for all to browse.

The Fritz-Metcalf Photograph Collection is a group of about 9000 photographs relating primarily to forestry, conservation, and the lumber industry in California and the United States. Subjects include logging operations, logging equipment, reforestation, forest research, fire protection, lumber mills, and the activities of the University of California's School of Forestry. The photographs were taken from 1906 to 1984 by Emanuel Fritz, Woodbridge Metcalf and others.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BIOS/fmpc/index.html

[TreeWinder]

Thanks, great resource

[SwampDonkey]

You fellas are new to the forum, so you may not have seen this older thread.

[SwampDonkey]

Logging camp



Well, they have to eat to.



These are from a calender.  ;D

[isawlogs]

Can you make some copies of the calendar ???  I'd send ya some looneys maybe even twoneys for one . 

[SwampDonkey]

Message sent mon ami.

[SwampDonkey]

Tractor train arrives at the rail siding, very cold day, 30 below.

[isawlogs]

 That pic reminds me of what my dad told me he did one winter. They had bought a new tractor and took a hauling contract with there cutting contract. The tractor was/is a 1954 Fergusson 2085. Dad had ordered a cab for it and a set of half tracks, tracks arrived but not the cab  :-\
  Tractor pulled two sets of bob sleighs once the tracks where set and hardened. The haul was about ten miles at the most with one long lake to cross, that was the cold part of the treck, the cab would of made it a nic winter , dad told me he would put the tractor in first gear once on the lake, jump off and run around the tractor and sleighs to stay warm.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, I don't know how common they were around here unless they cut on company ground. My grandfather and uncle only used horses. And my grandfather used a horse in his teens (1920's) until the early 1980's. Dad started out with horse and went skidder in the late 70's. I remember his black mare he bought and used, had a little old abandoned house on the upper farm with mud floor for the horse to stay in a few times. I remember us going and looking for a horse to. Funny how you can remember stuff like that when your only 5 or 6. :D The old house I can remember up until the 90's sitting near an old apple tree. When we sold stumpage and cleared some farm, I never saw it again and can't remember if it was cleared or just rotted into the ground. We also planted trees, so with all that going on I imagine it got lost.