A Look Back In Time – Eyewitness to Logging

Lucinda

Dr. Silas Conrad Kimm lived his entire life in northern Herkimer County, New York. He enjoyed writing about people and times in his life.

A Look Back In Time

Eyewitness to Logging

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, August 2022

The desire to tell what we have seen is as old as humanity. Dr. Silas Conrad Kimm (1863-1957) was born, raised and lived his entire life in northern Herkimer County, New York. He enjoyed writing about people and about the times in his life. Over the years he amassed hundreds of columns on all sorts of subjects, many of which had to do with his young life working in lumber camps. In 2014, his grandson, Gilbert H. Jordan II compiled the columns into a self-published book, which provides a lot of insight into the big timber days of New York. “The Lumberjack” (undated) is Kimm’s heartfelt tribute to those in the profession.

Horse Log Skidding Team

Above: Work horses skidded as many as 200 logs a day. It may be readily understood, therefore, that this was not an easy day’s work for man or beast.

COURTESY GEORGE SHAUGHNESSY

Kimm recounted one by one how the drop in lumber profits finished off small logging towns in Herkimer County. The blacksmith shop, the store, the post office, and finally the school all disappeared. Market conditions made it difficult to dispose of the lumber. Since the nearby forest was cut away, it became necessary to go farther and farther back into the woods to secure logs. The cost of transporting lumber was a big factor in reducing the profits. So many team loads of lumber, even though they were small, made the dirt roads almost impassible in the summer. In the winter, outside of the woods, huge snowbanks, blocked the highways.

The drop in lumber profits finished off numerous North Country logging towns that had come into being only because of logging operations. Hard times led to the timber theft of fiddle butts. Fiddle butts are the finest clear butt logs of Adirondack black spruce. They were once the principal supply for the manufacture of boards for pianos. Kimm writes, “When a man could get as much or more for a single log than for a team lead of ordinary lumber, the temptation to hunt for such logs was great, and he hunted for them without regard to ownership.” A January 10, 1889 Rome Daily Sentinel article, “Thieves Cut Down Forest Trees,” also tells how the state’s forest commission received almost daily reports that the best spruce trees were being cut down. In 1889 butts were “worth $25 a thousand feet in the log.” Fiddle butt timber has a fine straight grain, free from knots. “They are sawed into boards five-eighths of an inch thick. This is planed down to half an inch and made into sounding boards for pianos…the chief forest warden has been actively engaged in endeavoring to catch these depredators …”

Log skidding

A typical men-at-work-in-the-woods scene.

COURTESY ED FYNMORE

Reading about this history inspired me to reflect on the demand for wood throughout the history of America and the world. Forests have long supplied wood for a myriad of products. Wood has played an important role in the history of civilization. Humans have used it for fuel, building materials, furniture, paper, tools, weapons, and more. Demand for wood has not diminished, and, if anything, people have grown more appreciative of fine wood. Our relationship to this natural resource has remained comparatively unchanged over time, and methods of developing and managing woodlands have evolved into some of the best management practices to naturally renew and replenish millions of acres, while ensuring future generations will have the wood they need for products and the forests they need for recreation. Look around you. You’ll see wood everywhere. So perhaps this is why we take it for granted. Wood will always be a part of our lives despite the prevalence of plastic (which, unlike wood and wood products, takes forever to break down). We are dependent on forest products in so many ways, and we probably can’t imagine our lives without them.

If you’re looking for a good book that covers some of the interesting history, check out the work of Silas Conrad Kimm.

River Jacks

Heavy rains plagued the river drive and sapped ‘jacks’ energy levels, but through it all the whitewater, ice, rain and log jams, the logs eventually reached the mill pond.

COURTESY LYONS FALLS HISTORY ASSOCIATION

Check out O’Herns Books

Adirondack Weather: Noah John Rondeau, Ray Falconer and North Country Life

Lucinda

Adirondack Weather

Noah John Rondeau, Ray Falconer and North Country Life

An article printed in “The Lake George Mirror “, July 1,2022

Puddles of water have ice sheets

Covered with frost and

Morgan Mountain is

Show of Snow

Br-rr-r-r it’s cold!

Noah John Rondeau

By the fall of 1956, when Noah John Rondeau wrote “Br-rr-r-r It’s Cold,” he was among the 573 people living in Wilmington, N.Y. Morgan Mountain is a small peak behind the amusement park, Santa’s Workshop. Rondeau frequently hunted south of Morgan Mountain and often commented on its beautiful woods – “nice grounds… Not much game. Predominantly trees.”

Rondeau’s observations foretold feeling the coming winter. He knew the cold weather would soon be locked in. His free verse poetic lines were an attempt to capture nature’s sights which he had so often described in his diaries during his fays living as a hermit in the Cold River country wilderness.

Perhaps his primitive lifestyle influenced his sensitivity or gave special meaning to the daily adventurous changes the weather brought.

Weather changes such as when he woke on September 10, 1956 to record “Coldest yet; Not a Honey Bee in sight; Lighting Board wet and froze.”

His unique wording gave rise to an identification with the land that went down deep into his primal well of awareness as evidenced in a later September diary entry: “I listened to just enough rain drops on the roof to play Yankee Doodle” as he thumbed through a large wicker basket that held a sizable amount of fabric scraps he planned to cut into quilt blocks as he “counted” his riches and took in the Autumn colors that were “climaxing on Morgan Mountain.”

Noah’s imaginative descriptions to describe an everyday happening such as “I shot a partridge with my cartridge,” and “I hear a woodpecker knock his Pipe on a dry limb in the forest,” or weather-related occurrences: “My cabins look like snow mounds – one with a smoking Stove Pipe; The Trees and Wigwams, well decked with Snow. The Mountains are accordingly – wintery. I shovel snow a bit and watch the effects of the snowstorm in the forest as when I was a boy.”

And “Over 3 feet of hard-packed snow prevail over this mountainous region and it’s a nice hardset, tough winter. Feeble sunshine through dense atmosphere. Mountains bluish, smoky as if insinuating a thaw.”

His phraseology was a unique characteristic of the man once known as the Mayor of Cold River.

Noah once claimed, “I believe that I have learned ninety-five percent of what I know by myself.” With a formal education, he could have easily become a scientist, since that field was his major interest. He read about various scientific theories including evolution, geology, biology, mathematics, metaphysics and astronomy and studied the skies with his home-made telescope. He often remarked on the “Adirondack clear”—an atmospheric condition that offered visibility for many miles. He probably never visited the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the summit of Whiteface Mountain, opened in 1961, but one can easily imagine how he would have soaked up every bit of information provided in a tour of the field station and observatory.

In 1977 Raymond E. Falconer was a research associate with the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the State University of New York at Albany and directed the field students at Whiteface Mountain, Lansing Manor in Schoharie Valley and at Lake George.

While Noah John Rondeau religiously began each daily diary entry with a weatherperson- like capsule description of the day’s meteorological conditions, Falconer’s “Weather in the Adirondacks” provides a science-based, yet understandable description of the climate of the Adirondack Mountains.

As interesting as the description is, what is most exciting is that this thorough article was never printed until now. A little history explains why.

In 1946, George Glyndon Cole founded, acted as editor, and privately printed a 5 ½ x 7 ½ inch quarterly North Country Life magazine. He published the popular little magazine for 28 years, until 1974. Sometime following the release of the last issue, Robert F. Hall became the new owner. Hall said of Cole and the now rare and sought-after magazine, “During those years Cole collected and through the pages of the magazine presented the history and historical memorabilia of an entire region, New York State from the Mohawk River to the St. Lawrence. When his passion for history and folklore made these boundaries feel cramping, he expanded his horizon to cover the state as a whole and changed the magazine’s name to York State Tradition.

“The fact is that Glyndon Cole is himself a tradition. As curator of the North County Historical collection of the State University library at Plattsburgh he was friend, guide and helper to everyone – writers, students and merely interested readers – who probed for sources of the region’s past.”

Hall planned to “continue to focus on the history and folklore,” but also planned “to add enough pages so that we may deal with the problems of those who now live and work or who vainly seek work in this region. As this parenthetical phrase suggests we are disturbed by the depressed state of the economy of the North Country, by the proportion of our families who exist on incomes below the poverty level, by off-season unemployment, and by the abandonment of small farms.”

Hall went further, listing what he saw as other pressing problems such as maintaining environmental excellence, preserving open space, protecting wildlife, and protecting air and water from pollution.

The new North Country Life, its original name restored, had lofty, worthwhile goals that went well beyond it being, Hall emphasized, “a magazine for history buffs.”

The Summer 1977, Volume 29, No. 1 was prepared for printing. Falconer’s article was going to lead the line-up. Unfortunately, according to Hall’s son, Anthony F. Hall, the revived NCL “didn’t go forward because of lack of funding – the fate of many good ideas.”

The prototype of Vol. 29 No. 1 is preserved in the New York State Museum archives along with other Robert Hall papers. Factually, Falconer’s science holds true today. Ray Falconer’s North Country Life essay, “Weather in the Adirondacks,” can be found on page 16 of this issue.

William J. O’Hern is the author of the forthcoming “Adirondack Seasonal Observations From a Hermit’s Perspective:Noah John Rondeau’s Wilderness Days,” from which this essay is excerpted.

Lake George
Check out O’Herns Books

A Look Back In Time – Logging’s Connection with the Linn Tractor

Lucinda

The Linn Tractor, with its mechanized track, played a huge part in ushering logging into a new and much more efficient era.

A Look Back In Time

Logging’s Connection with the Linn Tractor

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, July 2022

The Linn tractor played a huge part in ushering logging into a new and much more efficient era. In this article, “Adirondack Logging,” Rev. Frank Reed meticulously explained the usefulness of the Linn tractors – the new-kid-on-the-block mechanized track machines that replaced old-style horse logging. Reed’s dissertation did not say how important the Linn tractor was to the growth of the paper industry in northern New York. Nor did he mention the far-sighted industrial statesman, G.H.P. Gould, who allowed his superintendent, John B. Todd, to purchase the experimental machinery that became so important to the Gould Paper Company’s success.

Linn Tractor logging

H.H. Linn (far right) by one of his early tractors. Circa. 1918-19

As a young boy working in his father’s logging business, an Upstate New York logger named Leigh Portner recognized the importance of sound performing machinery. As an adult he foresaw the benefit of restoring to working condition two Linn tractors his father once used. Today, at 87, Leigh continues to operate Portner Lumber Company and Sawmill. One of his pleasures is to show off his favorite Linn tractor. I asked Leigh to write about what he has learned and what he imparts to people who inquire about the line of now-antique Linn machinery.

Portner remembered this:

“The first Linn tractors used in the Adirondacks were sold to the Brooklyn Cooperage Co. and John E. Johnson of Port Leyden, N.Y. These early tractors came with a fifth-wheel trailer log sleigh, but the trailer did not work out well. One of the larger companies to use the Linns was the Gould Paper Company of Lyons Falls, N.Y.

Gould bought twelve tractors and a number of log sleighs to go with them. Each tractor cost about $5,000 and came with thirty sleighs each. The reason each tractor had three sets of ten sleighs, costing about $160.00 per set, was because of the high degree of breakdowns. Haul-back roads were rough. Between the sleigh’s vast weight, the steep grade, and uneven jarring terrain, the equipment took a beating. Broken runners and other parts were a continuous problem. The blacksmith was responsible for constant and necessary inspection and maintenance. They cycled the sleighs: while one set of ten was being loaded, another set was being checked by the blacksmith for breakage, and another set of ten was being unloaded at the landing.

Two early Linn tractors.

Two early Linn tractors.

Gould bought some larger six-cylinder model Linns in 1926. Each sleigh, once loaded, averaged about ten tons. The haul roads were kept well-iced with sprinkler wagons. On a twelve-mile-long road they used four sprinklers. A sprinkler was built onto a Linn with a trailer sprinkler tank in tow.

Travel on the steep hills was controlled by the sand hill man. His job was to ensure the tractor driver hauling the loaded sleds had a safe descent. He’d shovel little piles of hot sand and scatter straw at regular distances along the sloping snow road to keep the loads from jackknifing on the downgrade. The stuff slowed the tracks on the descent so that the engine would have to pull hard to get the load to the bottom. The sand hill man kept a fire in the sand pit because only hot sand would stick to the sleigh runners to slow them down. Gould declared that with a properly iced road, the Linns could pull forty cords up a five-percent grade.

Along with the tractor driver was a whistle punk. He was there to warn the driver if the bull-bows broke and the log load began to buckle. If any of that happened, the driver would have the time of his life exhibiting a bit of fancy steering on a wild ride downhill, trying to get to the bottom with his life intact.

At a logging camp called “Camp 7” at Ice Cave Mountain, the tractors were kept in a steam-heated garage. Between this camp and a similar garage at Camp 9, on the river, they kept two mechanics and a greaser busy doing maintenance. All the tractors were greased every night. When the temperatures reached forty degrees below zero, they would have to disconnect the fan belts and cover the radiators to keep them from freezing.

Linn tractor at Moose River

A Linn tractor pulls into camp 7 on it way to the Moose River Landing.

The Linn tractors were started and out by 4:30 in the morning. They tried to make three loaded trips per day to the Moose River landing with each tractor. Each Linn had a driver and a whistle punk who checked the toggle chains on big loads. Most of the drivers would pit the tractor out of gear on the big hill that went down to the river, and let it rattle full bore. That way they wouldn’t pile up the loads on the way down. The tractor drivers of the 1920s and ’30s got $4.00 per day, while laborers got only $1.00 per day and board.

The riverbanks were about twenty feet high in this area. The drivers would dump the first loads from the bank into the river, and as more logs came in they would build up a log bridge across the river. They’d freeze the bridge with snow and then build another bridge about 100 feet beyond the first one. As the bridges were completed, the tractors would drive out on them and fill in between the two bridges with more logs. When the ice went out in the spring and the drive started, the logs would roll right along from the landing in the woods to the pulp mill at Lyons Falls.

My experience with Linns started when I was fourteen years old and my dad let me drive our Linn with a large load of hardwood logs on it. My dad, Ernest Portner, had purchased the timber rights on a large wood lot in 1938. It was the site of a Civilian Conservation Corps camp beyond Hanifin Corners in Empyville, New York. The camp was still active. Most of the men were African-Americans. He bought it from the State of New York with a successful bid. These woods had never been cut, and the yellow birch and hard maple trees were thirty and forty inches on the stump. All the supplies were hauled in to camp with the Linn, Dad had a camp built for the men and a horse barn for the team. We had about twelve men working on this job, and we used the Linn to haul out to the truck landing, which was about five miles. The snow was four feet deep that first winter, and sometimes the temperature was thirty below. But the Linn would always start with gas in the primer cups and a few good pulls on the crank.

My father worked in those woods three winters and four summers. Though the years Dad had six Linn tractors: three 4-cylinder and three 6–cylinder. All were either scrapped or sold, except the 126 4-cylinder. That was used in the winter of 1964 to haul some big pine out to the truck landing. Then it sat out back of our sawmill until 2009, when I decided to restore it. I also have the 1921 Emporium No. 3 I mentioned earlier, and a 1928 6- cylinder. Both need restoration. In 2018 I took my restored 1926 Linn to the New York State Woodsmen’s Field Days at Boonville, New York. It made a quite a hit with the crowd.

At one time, my father also had the county snow plowing contract for snow removal on about twenty miles of road. We had three F.W.D. trucks and a 6-cylinder Linn with a V-plow and double sixteen-foot wings. With the dump box full of fifteen tons of ballast, he could plow six and eight feet of hardpacked snow with no problem. Our Linns never needed much repair work, as we kept them in good mechanical condition. They did not go fast, but they’d go through any conditions.

After the1950s, the Linns went by the wayside as the new skidders and other machines came out. They were last used in the Adirondacks in the late1950s, and then scrapped.

Other loggers and sawmill men throughout the state and nation also used Linn tractors from the 1930s through the 1950s. Many of the jobbers working for such outfits as Gould Paper Company, Finch Pruyn, and International Paper used Linns, as well as many smaller companies. The Linn Tractors were popular and well-regarded machines amongst the loggers and lumbermen of New York State.”

Check out O’Herns Books

A Look Back In Time – A Memory for Earl

Lucinda

Earl M. Kreuzer was among the oldest ’jacks I spoke with. One-by-one the loggers I have known, and some I have worked with, have “gone on.”

A Look Back In Time

A Memory for Earl

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, June 2022

One-by-one the loggers I have known, and some I have worked with, have “gone on.” With their passing they took with them a love for the industry and their historical connection to the loggers who cruised woodlots, followed the timber, cut it down, bucked it up, hauled it to river landings, cared for horses and machinery, drove logs to the mill, sawed logs into lumber, and produced pulp from wood for paper products. Logging still goes on today but with a difference. The logs must be cut, skidded, chipped, and gotten to market, or mill, the same as ever. The great difference is in the change of tools: Chain saws, chippers, whole tree harvesters, skidders, and trucks for hauling, while in the years gone by the work was performed by man-and horsepower. While the colorful old-style ’jacks, fiercely proud teamsters, inventive blacksmiths, prima-donna cooks, log-hopping whitewater men and river hogs have passed on, logging goes forward. Meanwhile, their history continues to draw attention to their times.

Peeled logs, spring break-up. Earl’s voice revealed both the danger and excitement as he shared river driving tales on the West Canada “Crick.”

COURTESY LYONS FALLS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

The idea of cutting timber to make a living appealed to those I knew, as did knowing they belonged to the ranks of those who had preceded them – all a special breed of men, and yes, some women, who pitted their skills and talents against the forest lumberjacks and lumberjills. The generation I knew were not the “shanty-boys” of old – loggers from the “pineries,” the virgin timber of the Northeastern forests who practiced the old ways of traditional logging long before the new era of machinery.

I’m happy to say that among all the oldsters I’ve interviewed, not one shared their memories from their bed in a nursing home. All lived generally independently – with the same air of freedom they had experienced in the forests. It was their generation who knew first-hand the older “shanty boys.” And it was they who passed on the memories through songs, stories and vintage snapshots, many of which included in Adirondack Logging: Stories, Memories, Cookhouse Chronicles, Linn Tractors and Gould Paper Company History from the Adirondack and Tug Hill Lumber Camps (In the Adirondacks, 2016).

Earl M. Kreuzer was among the oldest ’jacks I spoke with. My memories of him come back each year as I pass the dirt road that leads to West Canada Creek at the turn-off from Route 8 just before Hoffmeister, N.Y. My remembrance of Earl is as special as my memories of all the folks who have opened their doors to me and shared a bit of their life – stories that help to add to an understanding of a time we can know about only when history is recorded. This memory is for you, Earl, and for all the other special souls who’ve given freely of their time to help preserve their era:

Every year the trout lie sleeping in still cold pools waiting for an Adirondack winter to change to the warmth of spring. With each cycle, new people find the old footpaths up mountains, around the edges of boggy ponds and alongside streams that twist toward distant lakes and rivers. This annual freshness has a history. Earl Kreuzer, also known as the Mayor of Hoffmeister, was part of that history. He traveled those Adirondack trails long before me, rode logs on the Hudson River and owned a general store. His father, a former lumberman, owned and operated the Henry Kreuzer Hotel in Morehouseville.

“You’ve got to talk to the Mayor,” I was told, to get the lowdown on the logging operations in the West Canada Creek basin. “Earl knows everything from way back. Besides, he has the best collection of old lumbering stuff around.”

My best memory of meeting him is the clouds of black flies and the smell of his house, best described as poorly-ventilated cigarette smoke plus old stuff, mixed with wood smoke. I made two trips to his small cabin along New York’s West Canada Creek. The interior was cluttered with relics of another time, hunting and fishing paraphernalia, old logging tools and memorabilia. Earl told nonstop stories – one after another. I loved those stories but I never grew used to the swarms of black flies or the perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke. I snapped a favorite photo of Earl on my last visit.

Earl M. Kreuzer

Earl M. Kreuzer was 93-years old when I interviewed him. His mind was as sharp as a tack. Linn tractor at Whitney Park.

Photo by WILLIAM J. O’HERN

“Want to see a trick?” he asked, following my comment that his well-cared for vegetable garden did not have a protective wire fence. For the life of me I didn’t understand how he protected the crops from the forest critters.

“Sure,” I replied. “What’re ya gonna do?”

Earl’s next moves sealed him in my folklore mind as a legendary hero of the Adirondacks. Earl picked up his .410 shot-gun, grabbed a handful of unshelled peanuts, sat down on a log stump at the edge of the garden, and laid the rifle across his lap. “Watch this,” he said as he placed a peanut on the top of his bald head. It was only a matter of minutes before a chipmunk appeared. Chippy darted toward Earl’s motionless body, raced up his side, grabbed the nut, poked it into his paunch and leaped off on a mad dash to who-knows-where.

Earl’s 90-plus-year-old body bolted to life. The years had not slowed his reaction time. As the animal scurried off, Earl raised his rifle, aimed and fired. “There!” he declared in a big way, “That’s how I keep my corn to myself.”

I didn’t think much of the slaughter, but Earl was giving me a bit of insight into the ways of the old-time people of the Adirondacks. His behavior was simply part of his Adirondack character. I rather doubt anyone consciously sets out to become a character. Character traits merely develop in accordance with one’s personality. There’s no recipe for being a colorful individual. The men and women I call characters are unique in their own way.

It’s the unique cut of the old-timers characters that I think also holds a special spot in my heart. It seems as if less individuality stands out in the trade today. And it’s that lack that makes nostalgia for the earlier days more powerful.

While the lumber industry has always had its ups and its downs, New York State has an abundance of woodland and will continue to produce men and women who have an interest in working in the commercial lumber industry in some capacity, from cruising timber to marketing the finished goods.

The logging cry Tim-BERRR! has always had a twofold meaning in logging jargon. Since the days when choppers traveled by the light of a lantern into the woods, it has been a warning call from the feller of a tree to all within the sound of his voice to be careful because a forest patriarch is hurtling down. Bellowed in a woods-worker’s tavern, it also was, and is to this day, a summons to all at hand to share in the caller’s generosity to “belly up to the bar.” For both reasons, that iconic word will continue to resonate in America’s woods and taverns, recalling a colorful past and promising a productive future.

A typical scene of a logging camp crew and cooks. Earl said the women cooks often had their children in camp. “Even the youngest kids helped in some ways.”

COURTESY PATTI BATEMAN QUINN

Earl M. Kreuzer

Earl was a witness to see the change from the old-style logging to the appearance of mechanical equipment. COURTESY DONALD WILLIAMS

Check out O’Herns Books

A Look Back In Time – Woodsmen’s Sky Pilot Pastors

Lucinda

Ministers who traveled from one lumber camp to another were called “sky pilots”. Their mission was to pilot lumberjacks heavenward.

A Look Back In Time

Woodsmen’s Sky Pilot Pastors

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, May 2022

I recently went on a memory trip over rutted roads and mountain trails to meet sky pilot pastor Herman M. Jansson and to see his “parish” of 1,000 woodsmen in 1953. This adventure was made possible by Karl G. Karsch, a writer and photographer who wrote a story that appeared in the October 31,1953 edition of Presbyterian Life magazine, under the title “Woodsmen’s Pastor.” My thanks to the Presbyterian Historical Society for giving me access to this important archive.

Why were ministers who traveled from one lumber camp to another called “sky pilots”? They certainly didn’t arrive in camp by plane or helicopter. Their mission was to “pilot” lumberjacks in a spiritually heavenward direction. The term “sky pilot” is more focused, deeply thought-provoking and easily understood by reading a few lines Rev. Frank A. Reed asked loggers to ponder at one of his deep-woods logging camp services in the southwestern part of the Adirondack Mountains.

Pastor Herman M. Janssen

In a forest clearing, Herman M. Janssen (right) stops to talk with a husky lumberjack who holds a gasoline-powered chain saw.

Keep us, O God. From all complaining and self-pity. When our work is hard, give us the strength we need to do our best.

When our hearts are heavy,

give us a sense of Thy many blessings now and always. May our efforts and our hopes make us cheerful and serene That others may take new vigor and joy from us.—Amen

Rev. Reed was an Adirondack sky pilot – a preacher who traveled from logging camp to logging camp either on foot, on snowshoes or by riding on whatever means he could find thirty years earlier than Herman Janssen.

Carl G. Karsch introduces us to another woodsmen’s pastor. From Karsch’s article:

“At forty-six, few men would have made Herman Janssen’s decision. A year ago last summer he traded a comfortable parish in Michigan for a “congregation” of 1,000 lumberjacks in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. He sees his wife and two teen-age daughters only on weekends when he returns home to Saranac Lake. During the week he hikes or drives from camp to camp distributing portions of Scripture, holding informal services, and showing films. Lumberjacks, traditionally untalkative with strangers, are essentially lonely men, Herman says. If he can get a conversation started with a woodsman, Herman feels he can eventually gain the man’s confidence. And once a lumberjack realizes he has found a friend, it is not long before Herman tells him God is a companion, too.”

The point of using dummy text for your paragraph is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters. making it look like readable English.

His Scripture Selections Bring Hope

Before leaving home on Monday morning, Herman replenishes his stock of religious literature and Scripture portions, which he distributes to lumberjacks. This phase of his work is complicated by the number of language groups, principally French-Canadian, found in the camps. In order for men to read in the language with which they are most familiar, he carries pocket-size Gospels in five languages – English, French, Russian, Polish and German.

En route to camp, he frequently stops at a sawmill along the highway and visits among the workers’ homes scattered in the woods nearby. Families of sawmill workers, like lumberjacks, usually don’t go to church. They feel “town folks” don’t want them to come. Mothers are glad for the Sunday school lesson material he brings for them to read to their children. Gradually, Herman hopes to train some mothers in each sawmill area so they can organize their own Sunday school classes.

Pastor Janssen

On roads better suited to horses than a car, Herman borrows a team and sled to carry his pack and movie equipment to camp.

His Visits Bring Help

Sky Pilot Pastor

Audience in mess hall listens to talk following movie. In the front row is the only woman in camp, wife of the cook.

Evenings are the busiest, and the shortest, part of Herman’s day. Into the two hours between the end of dinner and “lights out” (nine o’clock) he must cram a movie, a brief religious talk, and any counseling. He encourages the “bull sessions” that result from the program. More than once they have been concluded over pie left from dinner provided by a beneficent cook. Herman watches for a man who lingers after the meeting, for this indicates he may have a problem to talk over. Personal devotions ended, Herman climbs into a spare bunk. He believes that by staying at the camps the men are more willing to accept him. For the same reason, he wears forest ranger clothes instead of a suit that would mark him as an outsider.

Last year [1952] he drove 14,000 miles between camps, although he walks when the mountain roads are impassable. Into a pack weighing eighty pounds when full go these items: magazines, Gospels, first-aid kits, matches, sheets, and knife. He keeps a compass pinned to his jacket but has never been lost. Herman enjoys the long hikes and has walked as much as twenty miles to a camp. In conversation with lumberjacks who are lonely, Herman points out that he, too, is by himself much of the time, but that in a real sense a man is never alone.

The appeal of all the sky pilots was their knack of imparting a reverence for Christian ideals while respecting the honest toil of hard-working men. They respected and inspired their parishioners while devoting themselves to improving the spiritual welfare of the lumberjacks. The sky pilots were unusual men with an uncanny ability to bring religion and spirituality into the lives of the men they worked so hard to reach. Sky pilots championed loggers in their quest to bring religion not only to New York’s Adirondacks region, but to other states across America’s vast Northern Forest.

Check out O’Herns Books

A Look Back In Time – Old Time Logging Romance: Does it Live On?

Lucinda

The logging days of yore inspired a fair amount of poetry and prose that perhaps romanticize a dangerous trade.

A Look Back In Time

Old Time Logging Romance: Does it Live On?

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, April 2022

The logging days of yore inspired a fair amount of poetry and prose that perhaps romanticize a dangerous trade. You can hear the romance of the log drive in Adirondack author Florence Western’s verses “The Passing of the Log Drive: Dedicated to Those Who Were a Part of It.”

By the time Western’s poem was published in the spring, 1961 edition of North Country Life magazine, the great river drives had vanished. The old-time lumberjack and his log drives were things of the past like westward expansion. Commercial logging began in Michigan in 1832, when the upper half of the lower peninsula and the upper peninsula remained one vast wilderness as the southern part was being settled. By 1870, the giant white pines in the lower peninsula had been cut down, giving way to farms, universities, manufacturing towns, railroads, paved roads, and golf courses. As settlers migrated west and needed lumber for houses and other buildings, logging went with them. While the average loggers were not paid a lot, they built fortunes for the “timber kings” who owned the companies and mills.

Another source for information about these early days: Adirondack Author Thomas C. O’Donnell, who cataloged 1928 newspaper reports of the last of the great white pine log drives that were finished in the upper peninsula of Michigan in the early 20th century. If you are interested in reading O’Donnell’s tales of the old log drives, check out his book Birth of a River, Tip of the Hill, and The River Rolls On. O’Donnell chronicles how nearly 2,500,000 feet of logs came down the Manistique River; when the drive was finished, lumbermen said Michigan had seen the last of the really large-scale affairs of that kind. Thus, another lost bit of the old frontier passed on.

The spring log drive offered some real money to the men who braved the whitewater and in doing their job furnished excitement for themselves and for onlookers. The now-vanished drives were certainly, in the eyes of many, the “good old days.” Logging itself remains a very viable industry today, although the methods have changed greatly. The thrill of the old days – what inspired poetry and prose in equal measure – is perhaps gone forever.

log divers

“Above the Bridge-Dam on the Hudson River, the water was covered with floating logs which the log divers were guiding toward the sluice way through which a torrent of water and logs were pouring.”—W.B Downey, Sky Pilot

COURTESY MAITLAND C. DESORMO

Check out O’Herns Books

A Look Back In Time – Warp and Woof of log drives

Lucinda

The “warp and woof” of old-time river drives has long since ended. A logger named John Shields remembered his river driving career in a 1916 interview when he recalled the “good old days.” His memories of those times and those river drives invoked the romance of past logging days. Shields said, “It was always a grand sight to see those big pine logs, with the bright sunshine on them, floating downstream.”

A Look Back In Time

The “warp and woof” of log drives

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, Jan. 2022

The “warp and woof” of old-time river drives has long since ended. A logger named John Shields remembered his river driving career in a 1916 interview when he recalled the “good old days.” His memories of those times and those river drives invoked the romance of past logging days. Shields said, “It was always a grand sight to see those big pine logs, with the bright sunshine on them, floating downstream.”

Shields once drove logs down rivers and creeks in western New York, but his experiences mirror those of other river drivers throughout the state and nation. Older river drivers were fond of recalling their former big river log drives. Often the work was a family affair. Shields’s brother was also employed in the logging industry. Said Shields, “My brother Jim first worked with the crew; then Jim went ahead as boss over some men who broke the log jams. I stayed behind with a crew whose duty it was to see that all stray logs that had lodged on the banks were rolled into the stream and restarted on their way down the creek. Sometimes the logs were backed up so far that a team [of horses] would have to haul them back to the bank.”

At one time, river driving was the easiest and quickest means of transporting logs. This did not mean by barge, boat or log rafts, but by actually floating single logs with the current downstream from forest to mill. Log drives were exciting and dangerous aspects of logging. They were the last of what was once a common logging practice dating back to Colonial days.

The log drive was a regular feature for several generations, and there are many photographs of log drives after the advent of modern photography, both still and motion. Some of the latter days of the event were captured by a few novices, such as the Rev. Frank A. Reed, who used a 16-mm movie camera. Log drives were marked by accidents as well as successes, and were among the most picturesque events in logging history.

For several generations now, people have known about log drives and log jams only as legend. And although we rush to absorb the latest technological advances, our lives are less rich in that we will never witness first-hand one of the great dramas Log drivers of American industry. Log drives demanded crews of great skill, courage and daring as well as men who were nimble and quick of foot. And as great flows of logs sped down the rivers, the spectacle attracted crowds of curious spectators who cheered with hurrahs and hoots.

Kay Halloran and Eileen MacKinnon told me similar stories in 2005 of their father’s work as a log driver. Their father was Alexander “Sandy” Currie. Halloran said, “He left home at 14 to work on the log drives and did it for 15 years.” Currie’s log driving work came to an end after he met his wife in a boarding house following a river drive. After they married, his wife insisted he end participating on the log drives. The sisters believed their father had “a rugged life in his youth.” MacKinnon painted a picture of their father as a man with huge hands, “probably from working on the river.”

Halloran said that because of Currie’s expertise in working with dynamite, a skill he learned while on the log drives, he was called on “all throughout New England, from Maine and into New York State, wherever coffer dams were being built for paper mills.” He helped build bridges and abutments and helped direct sand bagging during the flood of 1936, when he was a foreman in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.

river driver boat

All winter, lumberjacks felled trees and stacked the logs in high stacks called “decks” sometimes 20 to 50 feet high on frozen rivers and on the edges of streams. When the river hit just the right stage – high and still rising slightly in the spring, the decks were dumped into the rushing water. Luck was never really with the drivers. The downriver journey of logs was never without incident. Perhaps a river dropped too sharply, and giant log jams formed on river islands, along the shore and against bridge pilings. There were pitches, rips and falls – all of which added to the ever-present danger of keeping the “sticks” moving down the rushing and sometimes angry water. Dynamite was often the loggers’ only weapon in breaking a log jam. Some men worked from bateaus to pull logs from eddies. Others used peaveys and pike poles, working from floating logs and boats that went up and down the river.

In the early days, a majority of logs went to sawmills along rivers. Later on, major log drives throughout the Northeastern states provided the wood used in making pulp for paper. And in time the indispensable tools – long pike poles, peaveys or cantdogs, and river driving boats that shepherded logs downstream – were replaced by the chainsaw, the truck and the log chain. In turn, river drivers became truck drivers. Automation and mechanization have now taken over every segment of American life. The warp and woof of early log drives is now only a romantic memory of old-time logging days. Log driving was a victim of mechanization, truck and rail transportation – all of which could do the job more economically.

river logging

Log drivers Willie Snyder and Charles Auston knew they needed to ride logs and handle pike poles and peaveys skillfully – or quit. There was no in between. White water men couldn’t wise crack themselves out of a jam and no alibi would save their life if they had to “ride her.”

PHOTOS COURTESY LYONS FALLS HISTORY ASSOCIATION

Check out O’Herns Books

A Look Back In Time – My River Driver Father’s Career

Lucinda

I wanted to hear tales about this river driver and landing foreman for the Gould Paper Company, a man with a reputation for toughness and hard work in hard conditions.

A Look Back In Time

My River Driver Father’s Career

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, Dec. 2021

“Dad was one of the old-timers,” said Bill McGee on an early winter day in 2016. I spoke with him and his wife, Emily, at their New York home about Bill’s legendary lumberjack father, Herbert McGee. Herb was among those towering men who earned the reputation of “having the bark on.” I wanted to hear tales about this river-driver and landing foreman for the Gould Paper Company, a man with a reputation for toughness and hard work in hard conditions.

As stories go, when the old drivers were paid off at the end of a season most of them took to drinking and kept it up until their money was gone. They visited saloons with crowds, and their excursions often wound up in fights. The antagonists took sides, and pitched battles ensued, which sometimes continued for two or three days or until police arrived and the most belligerent of the drivers were taken to jail. On the other hand, many drivers who were thoroughly respectable citizens, as provident as men who labored in other, less hazardous fields. Herb McGee was a colorful character and the McGee family has some interesting history, including Herbert’s rum-running days and incarceration. “Dad did time,” said Bill, handing me a long newspaper account of his father’s arrest, and his mother Anna’s moonshine-making career during the days of Prohibition.

Herb McGee knew New York’s Moose River as well as any man. The river had first been used for log drives in 1851. River drivers knew the dangerous stretch was perilous. Men were crushed under the swiftly moving logs, chilled to death in the icy waters, drowned or otherwise killed trying to break up the great jams that formed at obstructions in the river. “Dad faced death each time he got on the river,” Bill continued. “A log drive was full of danger. He faced bobbing logs and rocks, biting wind, hail, sleet, snow, and rain in the spring. “Dad never wore mittens even though the weather oftentimes dropped to 50 below zero,” remembered Bill.

Herb hailed from East Bathhurst, New Brunswick, Canada, and began working in the lumber business at the age of 15 when he drove horses for a Canadian sawmill called the Snowball Company. “Dad came to Tupper Lake, NY, in 1913; he worked in the woods around Newcomb as a logger and loader for a private contractor named Ken Hunter.” McGee Sr. spent over 50 years in the logging business and worked for the Gould Paper Company (Georgia-Pacific) for 30 of those years. Over the years, McGee had related many a fact and a yarn or two to his sons, Bill and Herb Jr., about his experiences in the logging and lumber business.

Lumber tractor with skis

T.C. Williams’ gas Lombard at Gould Lumber Camp 7.

COURTESY FRED WORDEN

During the fall and winter months, Gould’s river drivers spent their days in the lumber camps. Bill described the typical camp as simply a long log building, usually consisting of a cook room at one end, an area in the middle called the “dingle” for unloading supplies, and the sleeping-living area, called “the men’s room.” The men’s area was one room with bunks lining the sides. Bill recalled his dad saying, “Many a yarn was cut in those days around the center heating stove before lights went out.”

Herb related that the food was great, they had plenty, and it was always homemade. His camp only had one cook, and that was his only job. Sometimes the cook chose ‘chore boys’ who helped with different jobs around the camp. Work throughout the winter involved cutting, hauling and stacking logs on the frozen half-mile-long stretch of river known as The Landing. Gould’s main landing was on the south branch of the Moose River, located a half mile below Gould’s Camp 9. The location was (and still is) on the property of the Adirondack League Club.

At the time of ice break-ups, the men gathered under various bosses to prepare for the drive. Herb knew some drive bosses who were “scarred and rheumatic from frequent exposures to wind and water.” Stout, flat-bottomed Moose River boats were prepared. Experienced men were equipped with iron-pointed pike poles which they used to free the all-too-numerous log jams that piled up on the journey to the mill. Whoops and yells, jokes and laughter were a part of the daily task. Some of the river drivers wore heavy woolen underwear, so thick they could stand a five-minute bath in the icy waters without suffering ill effects.

McGee, as the big river boss, was the key man. It was his responsibility to search out the log responsible for a jam. Sometimes it was necessary to attach a rope to it. A crew of men would then attempt to pull it free. Sometimes they needed dynamite to loosen a jam. This was the most dangerous job, since the jam might be freed by mounting water pressure while the dynamite was being placed. If the river driver was caught in the jumbled mass of moving logs, it would mean almost certain death.

Herb McGee retired from the Gould Paper Company in 1949, two years after the company’s last river drive. The days of river driving were over and McGee’s career was at its close.

When I visited Bill, he showed me some pictures. One colored snapshot was of Herb and his good friend “Huey” Dowling, dated 1964. “Dowling was known as a ‘Walking Boss,’” said Bill. Hugh was in charge over all of the camps of the Gould Paper Company. The lines in the older men’s faces tell some of their hard-bitten stories. Fortunately, filmed and taped interviews, camera-savvy photographers and personal memories have kept a permanent record of McGee and other men “with bark.”

As I looked at a 1974 photo of eighty-year-old Herb clutching a double-bitted axe and posed in front of a huge pile of firewood he was splitting, I couldn’t help but wonder: What kept a river driver on the job? Romance? The neverfailing lure of the white water? The dark bobbing logs? The crazy laugh of loons on the lakes? Perhaps the throaty song of the camp cook or the unique taste of his floury dough bread? There must have been something that kept calling the river driver back to his thrilling, exciting, dangerous life. Herb was but one of a race of hale and hearty, rough and ready men. His work is like a noted homegrown tobacco: “it will kill or cure” as an old saying goes.saying goes.

Herb McGee

Herb McGee early 1940s on the Moose River.

COURTESY LYONS FALLS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Check out O’Herns Books

A Look Back In Time – Daylight on a Stick

Lucinda

Tug Hill Storytelling: Visualize how America’s Great Northern Forest would have appeared if seen from above in 1820, stretching from Minnesota to Maine.

A Look Back In Time

Tug Hill Storytelling: Daylight on a Stick

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “,Nov. 2021

Visualize how America’s Great Northern Forest would have appeared if seen from above in 1820, stretching from Minnesota to Maine. Imagine a sea of continuous forests comprised of a mix of softwood and hardwood trees: Miles

upon miles of spruce, balsam, pine, birch, maple, beech, cherry, oak, chestnut, and other tree species spread across a great expanse.

Twenty years later, pioneer families that immigrated to America pushed westward from New England, where small towns had grown to metropolises. “Long lines of people had been coming into the country as the result in part of the 1848 revolutions in Europe,” explains Tug Hill author Thomas C. O’Donnell. “Europe was demanding more and more American grain, the Central States were producing untold quantities of it, and labor was being imported from Europe

to build railroads and ships to carry the produce.” Once wilderness, the character of the land was changing from farmland to booming cities. O’Donnell continues, “Homes had to be built to house the new populations, and harbors and docks for accommodating the ships. America was fast becoming industrialized and one of the industries

that matured over night was lumber.” With so many office buildings, factories, wagon-and barrel-making shops, docks,

shipyards, and so many other businesses being built, wood was in high demand.

By 1850, logging companies were actively harvesting America’s forests from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic seaboard.

Equipped with double bitted axes and crosscut saws, lumberjacks felled trees and skidded logs with horses

to rivers and floating the logs to mills. Twenty years later, logging companies that cut hardwood trees – trees too heavy to float on rivers – loaded them onto flat cars and transported them to sawmills by train.

As logging diminished the virgin forests, concern for protecting and preserving vital forests for future generations emerged among the public. Scientific studies, often from Europe, in the new field of silviculture advanced woodland knowledge. Foresters, trained professionals who studied what we today call forest sustainability, appeared on the

scene. Loggers became educated and imparted their knowledge to other loggers. No one wanted to see forest

land disappear, nor did they want a way of life to come to an end.

I enjoy listening to older loggers talk about their careers in the woods. Some of their tales about their experiences can create a lot of nostalgia. Learning about the evolution from old-style logging to mechanized methods is a reminder of the advancements in technology seemingly realized in a short period of time. There have been stories that made me laugh and others that amazed me, but the true stories of averting danger and death are reminders of how dangerous the job could be in the old days of logging and even today.

The Adirondack logging careers of those I’ve spoken with and heard about have been an eclectic mix: forester, cook and cookie (a cook’s assistant), teamster, mechanic, Linn tractor driver, camp clerk, blacksmith, truck driver, chopper, notcher, spudder, road monkey, swamper, straw boss, river driver, dynamite expert, cat skinner, whistle punk.…A complete list would be as long as a pike pole. Most often, the drama of an Adirondack log drive relived decades after still dwells within the heart of a lumberman, and for the outsider is a reminder that log driving was serious business. Today’s loggers and sawmill workers are contemporary business owners and workers in a global industry. The industry includes workers who do everything from haul logs from the forest to produce paper, furniture, baseball bats, and countless other wooden items.

Logging has moved into the 21st century, but the memory of an earlier time remains – the time of lumberjacks and lumber camps. While the colorful old-style ’jacks, fiercely proud teamsters, inventive blacksmiths, prima-donna cooks, log-hopping whitewater men and river hogs have passed on, logging goes forward. Meanwhile, their history continues to draw attention to their times.

The history is particularly rich in New York State. Abundant forestland and plenty of waterways combined

to give the Adirondack Mountains, the Tug Hill country north of Rome, N.Y. and the Southern Tier, a booming lumber

trade for more than 150 years. I’ve heard estimates of nearly 150 logging camps with 7,000 lumberjacks in the Adirondacks alone during the first decade of the 20th century.

I have long been fascinated by this history and made a point to meet those individuals who remembered

it before they were gone. I jotted down this note at an informal gathering of former timber industry workers in the 1980s, hosted by Joe Conway and archivist Mary Teal of Lyons Falls, New York: “The tall spruce strains, and then with a c-r-r-r-r-rack! falls to the forest floor with a thud. Swampers move quickly, trimming the evergreen giant with chain saws buzzing and sawdust flying.”

In the days of the New York ‘jacks, it is easy to imagine someone uttering that iconic cry of “Tim-BERRR!” when that spruce hit the ground. Tim-BERRR! has always had a twofold meaning in logging jargon. Since the days when choppers traveled by the light of a lantern into the woods, it has been a warning call from the feller of a tree to all within the sound of his voice to be careful because a forest patriarch is hurtling down. Bellowed in a woods-worker’s tavern, it also was, and is to this day, a summons to all at hand to share in the caller’s generosity to “belly up to the bar.” For both reasons, that iconic word will continue to resonate in the Adirondack and Tug Hill woods and taverns, recalling a olorful past and promising a productive future.

Another story I remember about the old New York lumber camps is the following remembrance of Norman R. “Norm” Griffin.

COURTESY LAWTON L. WILLIAMS

Unidentified Gould supervisor and Louie the road monkey at his station on the sand hill that led down to the Moose River Landing.

Norm was seventy years old and living in Homer, Alaska, when I last interviewed him in 1986. He worked for The Gould

Paper Company in 1936. The passage of time had not dimmed his memory. Norm assured me, “Those are the kind of reminiscences that I’ll never forget.” He said it was during some hard times in America. I was nineteen years old. My brother, Red, was eighteen. I had worked on a farm from the time I was eleven years old until I was nineteen, then I joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), staying until I was twenty-one. The Three Cs is one thing that shaped my life along with the brief time I was with the loggers.” He supposed it was the camaraderie of shared accomplishment and a feeling that he was a part of a big family in both the CCC and with Gould. He felt it “was unmistakable in that era.”

Norm talks about his logging days experiences:

“Mr. Hugh Dowling, the Bull of the Woods, put me on the payroll and sent me on to Camp 8 as a road monkey

for two and a half bucks a day with a dollar a day off for board. My task was to work on the roads which were not much better than trails in tiptop condition. Holes caused by heavy sleighs and tractor treads needed to be filled with snow and then sprinkled with water so the snow would freeze and form a solid and safe foundation. Soft roads, holes and bumps

could cause breakdowns or worse – disasters.

“We were roused at 5 AM for breakfast. One guy used to say how good they were to us. Wake us up in the middle

of the night to feed us. After breakfast we went out to inspect the roads under our charge and shoveled snow into the road from the sides. It was hard work but most of us were pretty tough and didn’t complain. It was dark so early in the morning, so we worked by the light of kerosene lanterns mounted on long poles stuck in the snow. Some called it ‘daylight on a stick;’ others called it ‘moonlight in the swamp.’

We chewed plug tobacco because if we stopped to light a cigarette the boss would growl at us. At that time, I was the youngest one in the camp, but everyone treated me very well. I heard many wonderful stories, true and otherwise. I also learned some verses of traditional logging songs. One song is about a fight that went on for forty minutes involving a Christian logger named Jack Driscoll, during which he lost two teeth and his opponent, Bob, who lost an ear. Here’s

a bit of it:

Jack he got Bob under

And he slugged him once or twice;

And Bob confessed almighty quick The divinity of Christ.

So fierce discussion ended

And they rose up from the ground;

Someone brought a bottle out And kindly passed it around.

And they drank to Jack’s religion In a quiet sort of way.

And the spread of infidelity

Was checked in camp that day.”

 

 

More of Norman Griffin’s logging memories appear in Adirondack Logging: Stories, Memories, Cookhouse Chronicles, Linn Tractors and Gould Paper Company History from Adirondack and Tug Hill Lumber Camps (In the Adirondacks, 2019

COURTESY DOROTHY PAYTON

A Linn tractor with log-loaded sleigh headed to the Moose River Landing.

Check out O’Herns Books