Please help identify an old logging relic deep in the woods

[Zach Hoyt]

I don't know if this is the right section of the forum to ask this question, and if not I hope someone will move it.  I live in the Adirondacks now and came across this machine on the trail to High Falls on the Oswegatchie River, several miles south of Cranberry Lake, while backpacking around the lake last summer.  I am curious if anyone can identify it, or even if it was a commercially produced machine in this configuration or a home-made one-off that someone put together from parts of other things.  I can see that it was made to skid logs, but I wonder if it dragged logs behind it as it drove, or if the tracks were just used to move it and all the actual skidding was done with the machine stationary, using the winch.  I am sorry the pictures are not better.  It was dark when I arrived in the evening, and when I left in the morning it was pouring rain.

[Zach Hoyt]

Here are the other pictures...

[Zach Hoyt]

And one more

[beenthere]

Likely you are right with the thought that the tracks were to move the rig from point to point and set up to cable in logs to a landing. Not likely used as a skidder. 
Great to see the pics. 

[B.C.C. Lapp]

Ive never seen any thing quite like that.  

[Resonator]

Looks like what remains of a 1920's mining shovel (can find pictures online of Bay City models). The main boom is missing as well as the dipper stick and bucket. The steel triangle structure in the middle held the cable running to the boom and stick (they formed a X shape). The tracks are crane pad style (flat - no tread/cleats) and you can see the chains that drive the tracks. You can also see the teeth of the slew ring that it rotated on.

[doc henderson]

Zack that is cool.  Let us know if you get it running. 

[rusticretreater]

In amazingly good condition.

[chet]

 I think Jeremy nailed it.  1929 3/8 yard Bay City Tractor Shovel

[NewYankeeSawmill]

Amazing! Thanks for sharing!
We used to vaca with the family in that neck of the woods every year. Stayed at a cabin on Silver Lake (across from the restaurants at the North end of Cranberry) when I had the cake. After that we stayed in the camper at the State Park!   Gorgeous part of the country there... dunno how you do the winter, though.

[Zach Hoyt]

Thank you all very much for your help.  The Bay City 3/8 yard looks like a perfect match.  I am glad to know that it is a power shovel and not a skidder like I had thought.  I wonder how it ended up there 10 miles or whatever it is from the nearest paved road, without the boom or whatever it's called.  It would seem equally odd that it should have been driven out there without those parts, or that someone would have gone to the trouble to detach them and take them away afterward and leave the rest of it there.  

The winters here are not bad, so far in my experience.  I am self employed building banjos and things, and my workshop is just 16 feet from the house, so when the weather is bad I just fire up the wood stove out there and try to be productive till spring comes.  Before moving here in 2022 I lived for 21 years on a farm in the lake effect snow belt off Lake Ontario, so things seem comparatively easy here, and I work inside instead of outside which helps too in the winter.  

[DHansen]

Very cool.

[chet]

Much better pic and a good write up on that machine here:  https://rootsofmotivepower.com/heavy-equipment/shovel-bay-city-diesel-1079/

[doc henderson]

Zack, you will enjoy getting to know Resonator.  He is an Entrepeneur as well and a musician.  we all look forward to hearing more.  Maybe there was a logging road now overgrown.  It had to get there some way, and if it broke, may have been coming out in pieces.  I lived in Albany for 4 years and sailed on lake George.  kayaking once on a river under a hydroelectric dam near finger lakes.  had to wait for the water to turn on, and walked up the river with kayaks after it was turned off at 5pm.

[Zach Hoyt]

Thank you all for all your help.  From what I have read there was a logging railroad that ran out to where the machine is, and then at some point around 1920 if I recall right the tracks were removed but the railroad grade was still used as a logging road or for access to other things back in there, so it would have been easy enough, if probably pretty slow, to drive the machine in there if it was in running order at the time.  Now there are a lot of places where the beavers have flooded the old road, in places up to a couple of feet deep when I was through there last July.  It was an unusually wet summer and all the water was high in these parts, but the swamps there never really dry up off the road completely from what I have heard.  

Here's a link I found to a video of one of these being driven (though not digging) at a place called Wanaka in New Zealand.  The town the machine up here would have come in through to get to  where it is now is Wanakena, which seems vaguely coincidental.  It's been on state land for many decades now and is thus an artifact, or something like that, though it appears that souvenir hunters have removed a lot of parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a0uwUeQjSw

[Resonator]

Wouldn't be surprised if it was abandoned after the timber was all cut or when the market crashed.
Zach it's good to hear you build banjo's. I've never built instruments, but appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into them (and do enjoy playing them).

[Old Greenhorn]

Zach, Have you read any of Dr. Michael Kudish's books on your region? He was a professor at Paul Smith's for over 30 years and writes extremely well and in depth about your region. He covers mine very well too (the Catskills) and lives here now staying very busy. A very interesting, knowledgeable, and personable guy. I attended one of his talks a few years back about dating stumps for old logging operations (a hobby of his, which he is an expert on). Anyway, his stuff is good reading.
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I took a look at your banjos, very nice stiff indeed and I see you do mostly open backs as well as all the other stringed instruments. Taking on fiddles is a whole other level and yours look great. I wonder if you have ever been to the Luthiers Show in Woodstock? Perhaps we have crossed paths there.
 Up until COVID I was deeply buried in the banjo world and I miss it now (except for the traveling part), but I am getting older and it's hard to keep up. Still when I run into guys like Tony Trischka, Bela, Norm Pickelny, and others it is nice to get some catching up time. I still miss my friend Bill Keith dearly and I haven't picked up my Rich & Taylor since he died. But it is a wonderful world and I miss it. I did try my hand at drop thumb several years back taking lessons from a neighbor and friend who is a touring musician. It was fun, and I might try it again when I get feeble and need something to do in a chair.
 Too bad you are not coming to the pig roast. You and Res could play some nice duets. I surely would love to try one of you mando's in my hands for a bit, they just have that 'look' that tells me they probably sound great.

[mudfarmer]

The shovel most likely came from the iron mine just up the road and the winters are a lot easier now than back then