HISTORY OF BAY COUNTY
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LOGGING OPERATIONS.
The wonderful
results that have been accomplished in the manufacture of lumber are due, not
alone to improved machinery, but to improved systems of labor, as well. In no other business are the systems and
methods of labor more thoroughly organized and adhered to. From the time the towering pine in the forest
is noted in the minutes of the land hunter, until in the form of lumber, lath
and shingles, it is piled upon the vessel or car, there is no deviation from
carefully devised plans of action.
The logging operations form a
distinct business by themselves and during the Winter
months create a new world which drains the manufacturing centres
of quite a considerable part of their population. Thousands of people observe saw mills in
operation, devouring logs with marvelous rapidity, without having any
conception of the methods employed to obtain the logs. The logging camp, and the
process of converting the tree into logs and placing them in the streams, are
interesting factors of the lumber business.
The following description has already been published, but it covers the
ground so well that we give it in this connection. The writer says:
In the first place, in starting a
camp a foreman who has entire control of it is hired, and, with as many men
as are required to run it, builds the camp by notching the ends of logs
together and building them the same as a log house is built, only the camps are
usually one story, just high enough to admit a person, and the roof made of
boards covered with tarred paper. A
camp consists of the mens shanty, cook shanty, barns, blacksmith shop and one
or two other shanties to live in. As
soon as these are erected the boys begin chopping the timber down, while the
sawyers saw the balance of it. The swampers are cutting the brush out of the way and logs,
etc., for the skidders, who, with teams, as fast as the sawyers get out of the
way, throw the logs on the skidways, two logs laid on
the ground parallel with each other, and about six or eight feet apart, and
pile the logs up till they look like a hay stack. When the logs get so high the men cant roll
them up with cant hooks, the skidder, with team, decks them by drawing or
rolling them up with a long chain or rope.
In the meantime a certain number of men are set to work building roads
from the camps from the camps to their banking ground, by clearing a place
about twelve feet wide of all stumps roots, etc., so that when the snow comes
there will be no obstructions whatever to the sleighs. Branch roads are built leading to the main
roads in all directions. Trees are cut
up according to the number of logs they will cut. Some trees will make three sixteen-foot
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logs and a twelve-foot log; some more. It is calculated that a chopper will trim, measure and get timber ready for the sawyer. The tote team is kept on the road between the camp and the place where supplies are got, drawing supplies into the camp. As soon as snow comes in sufficient quantities, sleighs are got out and most of the teams go to hauling. The most of the sleighs have eight or nine feet bunks, and they hold immense loads of logs, loads being drawn scaling all the way from 3,000 to 6,000 and 7,000 feet, making so many trips each day. Teamsters have to get up about 3 oclock A. M., to get their trips in. In skidding, a pair of tongs are used now instead of a chain, resembling a pair of ice tongs , which are hooked into an end of a long in a second and the log is under way. When the men are a half a mile or a mile away at work a long tin horn about five feet long is used to call them to dinner. When the roads are being packed to haul on, and when they have begun hauling, a sprinkler is run all night every night during cold weather, which is a huge box, water-tight, holding forty or fifty barrels, set on sleighs, the same as a wagon box. A slide in the rear lets the water run out on to the road, and freezing as fast as it touches the road, soon farms a road of solid ice, which lasts until warm weather in the Spring.
AN INCIDENT OF 1847.
Curtis Emerson was
running a mill at Saginaw, in 1847, and that Winter
had a logging camp near Caro, Tuscola County.
There were but four steam saw mills on the
Saginaw River, one at Saginaw City, one at Portsmouth, one at Lower Saginaw,
and the old yellow mill at East Saginaw, generally known as the Emerson
Mill. The entire cut of these four mills
for 1847 was less than 3,000,000 feet.
For the season of 1847 Emerson stocked his mill with logs from the Cass
River, and his lumber camp was within a half mile of Caro, now the county seat
of Tuscola County. At that time, after
leaving a small clearing of three or four acres, made by John Miller, a
blacksmith, about a half mile out of the present village of Tuscola, then a
small hamlet, the whole country of the Cass was a howling wilderness; not a
blow had been struck or a tree cut by a white man. The only way of penetrating the vast and
unsettled portion of the country was by an Indian trail. At that time Tuscola was the only organized township
in the county. At the Spring
election of 1847 there were only thirty-six votes cast, which represented the
entire voting population of Tuscola County.
In cutting his lumber roads, Emerson
followed, the greater part of the way, the Indian trail, which increased the
distance some three or four miles, and made the distance from the village of
Tuscola to his camp about twenty-five miles.
His camp was supplied with hay from low lands about three miles below
the city limits, and his men in camp supplies from the city of Flint. It took four full days to make a round trip
to his camp. Hay cost him when delivered
$40 per ton, and the camp supplies in about the same proportion. The logs got
out at his camp that Winter were of cork pine, and run
largely into the upper qualities of lumber.
From this lot of logs in 1847 was shipped out of Michigan the first full
cargo of clear lumber. It was consigned
to C. P. Williams & Co., Albany, N. Y. At this
early day there were no lumber scows, steamboats, or steam tugs on the Saginaw
River. The lumber was thrown from the
docks into the river and then rafted and then poled down the river and out five
miles into the bay, and then put on board of vessels. At that time there was about four and a half
feet of water on the Carrollton Bar.
A LOAD OF LOGS.
A load of logs, said to have been
the largest ever hauled by a single pair of horses, was hauled at a camp on the
Pinconning Railroad , February 24, 1883. The weighing about 2,860 pounds, was y driven
by a man called Black Tom Burns, The load was hauled a distance of one and
one quarter miles, and the logs scaled 16,613 feet.
The logs were loaded on two pair of
sleighs, and the detailed scale is as follow:
First sleigh. Feet. Second sleigh. Feet.
One log
.. 736 One log
736
. 736
. 800
710
.. 876
. 876
1,068
. 800
1,029
. 876
.. 736
. 923
1,120
710
1,068
. 710
.. 657
. 736
710
_________ ____________
Total
7,813 Total
8,800
The logs were owned by J. H. Hill &
Sons, and were marked nice, and belonged to a gilt edged lot, being hauled
over the Pinconning Railroad to Saginaw Bay.
According to the average weight of
the entire train load, these logs weighed three and one-half tons to the
thousand feet, making a total of fifty-three tons in the above load. James Redy was
foreman of the camp.