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

April 15, 2022September 18, 2022 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.

“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

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

January 6, 2022September 17, 2022 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

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.

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.

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

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

December 3, 2021September 18, 2022 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.

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 early 1940s on the Moose River.

COURTESY LYONS FALLS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

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A Look Back In Time – Daylight on a Stick

November 16, 2021September 28, 2022 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.

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A Look Back In Time – Tug Hill Storytelling: Tales of Prosperity and Snowstorms

October 11, 2021September 19, 2022 Lucinda

Tug Hill Storytelling: I was fortunate to know Matthew Joseph “Joe” Conway. Joe, a native of the Tug Hill region of New York

A Look Back In Time

Tug Hill Storytelling: Tales of Prosperity and Snowstorms

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

In the fall of 1977, I sat among former lumbermen at Joe and Madge Conway’s home in Woodgate, New York. I was there to attend story-telling sessions about the old days held at the Conway home. I was fortunate to know Matthew Joseph “Joe” Conway. Joe, a native of the Tug Hill region of New York, was born in Highmarket and grew up in Port Leyden, a logging community, surrounded by old- timers and characters who ran the gamut of trades. Loggers and lumberjacks – actually anything related to the old days of the logging industry – were his favorite hobby because he related to the forest and the people who used to call it home.

At the Conway house, I heard a lot of bragging about the old days, but these stories were also a proud reflection of the men’s local history. There may have been a bit of grandstanding …did anyone really believe the story about a logger darting from a bank, jumped into a river with a loud splash, and began racing across the surface on nimble feet, with only his speed and a fringe of scales on the sides of his webbed toes keeping him from sinking?

Maybe not, but it didn’t matter. Joe’s confab sessions with old-time loggers were a sensation. He was witty and always colorful. I was invited to attend evening gatherings with Lyons Falls, N.Y. Gould Paper Company factory employees, former ’jacks, river drivers, road monkeys, men who were part of loading crews, Linn tractor drivers, and other hard-working, brave and trustworthy men-of-the-woods who had been involved in the operation of lumber camps and various logging operations. The diverse crowd was much like the multi-hued outburst of fall color outside Joe’s living room. Autumn was the time we typically gathered. Unfortunately, as I think back, I wish I’d had the foresight to bring a tape recorder. I could have captured and preserved a way of life that has now vanished from the scene. At least I took notes.

Joe told me he hoped the informal chit- chat would “provide me a with a review of life in the Adirondack woods before that which is hailed today as ‘progress’ had had its effects. And, perhaps, it would provide a chuckle or two and much nostalgia.” He always concerned himself with those personal stories: During Joe’s retirement years, he turned his hand to writing regional history. He has passed on, but I have my memories and his two books Highmarket As You Were: Two Hundred Years of Tug Hill (self-published, 1977) and Port Leyden, The Iron City: A Passing Glance (self-published, 1989). Wanting to preserve as much as possible about life in the once-flourishing community of Tug Hill, he collected historical facts, maps, newspaper files, church records, and census reports, gathered family stories and pictures, and interviewed long-time natives. His personal approach to telling a story is just the opposite of how formal county histories read. He opened Highmarket As You Were by quoting Tom O’Brien’s one-page book titled Short History of Highmarket. O’Brien was an old-time Tug Hill native who Conway said wrote “brusquely, simply, and factually.”

A log-loaded Glenfield-Western “Gee-wiz” train approaches John Alger, Henry Gremo, and Henry Sattler waiting at a Tug Hill whistle stop.

COURTESY JOANNE SATTLER

This is Tom O’Brien’s entire book:

First the Indians settled there;

And the Yankees drove them out.

Next, the Welsh, Irish, and Dutch

drove the Yankees out.

Then the Polacks drove the Welsh,

Irish, and Dutch out.

Now the woodchucks are drivin’ the

Polacks out.

Conway commented that wit of the Irishman “accurately establishes the migratory order of the various nationalities who ‘Came, Saw,’ only to be eventually ‘conquered’ by the elements and changing times. Possibly the woodchucks were there all the time.”

Following the Iroquois, who as their Native American legend tells “sprang from the ground” somewhere in the vicinity of Barnes Corners, white pioneer settlers arrived. Conway states that 1814 marked the year pioneering folks made “a long arduous trip by ox cart from Connecticut up into this desolate Lesser Wilderness” (the term distinguishes Tug Hill from the Adirondacks, the “Greater Wilderness” ). The pioneers stayed, erected rough log cabins, and began clearing plots of the forest around their shelters for crops. This was the beginning of Thompson Corners, soon-to-be renamed Highmarket, Joe Conway’s ancestral home.

Today, Highmarket exists only as a name on a map. Around 1849 the Irish began to move in after they had built the Black River Canal, and soon after the Welsh, Germans, and Swiss followed. It was this pioneer era that gave way to progress. Conway wrote: “At the tender age of eleven or twelve, many [boys began to] learn the lumberjack trade first-hand” and opportunities for most girls were just as unfortunate. Some worked at home, became housemaids in surrounding towns, “or went to Utica to work in the textile mills.” Conway knew of one girl who began cooking in a lumber camp at the age of twelve, “progressing at sixteen to the same occupation on a state barge which traveled between Lyons Falls and Carthage.”

The abundance of timber brought a level of material prosperity to early Tug Hill residents.

Conway writes: “It has been recorded that between 1840 and 1860, Lewis County furnished about two-thirds of all birdseye maple used in the world, with most of this coming from the Tug Hill Plateau. The tall spruce of the plateau were in great demand for spars for the sailing vessels of the day as were the sawed softwoods for city wharves, piers and buildings. New York City and Buffalo used tremendous amounts of Tug Hill timber for their wharves and docks.

Both timber and spars were being shipped out of Highmarket as early as 1856, drawn by teams to Port Leyden and Boonville, where the spars were bound into rafts and towed down the Black River to the Erie [Canal] and beyond. Both the canal boats and the Black River Railroad transported the sawed lumber…”

Think of all the oyster kegs, barrels, cheese tubs, butter firkins, wagon tongues, flooring, pianos, spars, piles, wharves, piers, newsprint, paper bags, toilet tissue, boxes, cartons, writing paper, charcoal, alcohol, and buildings that Tug Hill timber provided. And the little town of Highmarket was a big contributor ….

Joe Conway’s brief discussion of logging reflects the industrialism and shows the true pioneer spirit that was necessary for those early lumbermen and women to settle and eke a living in the upland country known for 400-inch snow sea- sons. As one descendant remarked to Joe about those who endured the lofty plateau, “They all should have flags on their graves — just for fightin’ the Tug Hill snowstorms.”

Unfortunately, by the time Joe began gathering materials and published Highmarket, As You Were, it was too late for many personal stories. Those who could have related happenings on The Hill were gone.

Conway told of whitewater crews as “men of steel. Driving logs was no child’s game.” A force of water and logs. These grim battles relied on the ingeniousness and courage.

JIM FYNMORE COURTESY LYONS FALLS HISTORY ASSOCIATION

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A Look Back In Time – A Lifelong Interest in Loggers and Logging History

August 26, 2021September 18, 2022 Lucinda

A Look Back In Time

A Life-Long Interest in Loggers and Logging History

An article printed in “The Northern Logger “, August 2021

William “Jay” O’Hern is an Adirondack-based author. In this new monthly column, he writes about the history of the north woods logging and timber industry, as well as the lives of the men and women who made the industry what it is today. The author’s website: www.adirondackbooksonline.com has a variety of history books that span New York’s Adirondack Mountains, North Country and Upstate, logging, folklore and tales.

Readers are encouraged to share interests, memories, experiences and photos of their own “Long Gone” logging industry involvement at jay@adkwilds.com.

Why do people work in the woods? The question usually has a simple and practical answer: The need to earn a wage. That was certainly what initially drew me to the timber industry as a young man.

My first exposure to the timber industry took place at Crockett’s sawmill in Red Creek, N.Y. during the late 1960s. I had recently quit work at Hammermill Paper Company in Oswego, N.Y. It was during the time when large paper-cutting shears were operated with foot trip pedals. I had taken the job to be one of five men who worked as a “trouble-shooter” or quick-response repair crew. The position involved my crew to resolve the problem when a large semi-liquid sheet of paper broke overhead while in transit over an array of rollers that squeezed and dried. Between learning how to quickly correct a break in the huge (and intimidating) papermaking machine, worrying about the constant danger of negotiating through the machine’s narrow interior passageways, and the daily dose of hearing the crack that meant a gigantic v-belt had broken and was sailing helter-skelter at high speed with enough force to kill a person… well, let’s just say that on-the-job injury or death were pretty much constant risks.

Despite the danger of the environment, I enjoyed the work. My employment at the sawmill exposed me to mill workers, drivers of log trucks, and various lumbermen and women. At the same time that I worked in the sawmill, I got curious about the broader scope of the industry. I learned about it by reading The Lumber Camp News and The Northeastern Logger, predecessors to The Northern Logger & Timber Processor. In keeping up with the times, as one might expect, the magazine’s focus and content changed over the years, and I followed along.

From this early exposure, I became fascinated by the industry’s history. It is my belief that in order to think about the future of the timber industry, we would do well to learn lessons from the past, from the men and women who made logging and processing what it is today.

COURTESY TOWN OF WEBB HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Rev. Frank A. Reed conducting a ministerial service at Gould Paper Company’s Camp 9, 1948.

So, a history lesson:

What current readers of The Northern Logger & Timber Processor might not know is the long-standing magazine’s origin. The Rev. Frank A. Reed was an enthusiastic supporter and proud practitioner of supporting lumberjacks – the young, the middle-aged, the inebriated, the sick, the down-and-out, the homeless and the old-timers. Rev. Reed was also the author of the classic Lumberjack Sky Pilot (North Country Books, 1965). His stories along with pioneering, ground-breaking sky pilots Frank Higgins, Aaron W. Maddox, Charles Atwood and Clarence W. Mason’s and true tales – of spending winter nights in the mountains, experiences with big draft horses, an escape from a falling rock, being lost in the woods – according to Rev. Reed “laid the foundation for the creation of The Lumber Camp News,” a publication Reed established in 1939 for the entertainment and education of men in the lumber camps.

When Rev. Reed began missionary work in the lumber camps in 1915, he recalled, “There were thirty-two log drives on the rivers and streams in the Adirondack area.” With increased reliance on logging trucks by the early 1950s, most if not all of the pulp wood was hauled to the mills over heavy-duty rubber tires. The heavily-loaded trucks have become a common sight on northern highways. Thousands of cords of logs had been driven down the Hudson River from below its start at Henderson Lake north of Newcomb. It is about 75 miles to the log landings at Little Bay near Glens Falls, where the Finch, Pruyn Company had a large mill.

During all the time Rev. Reed was in the lumber camps, he was never denied the privilege of speaking to the workers. He did recall one camp boss early in his career as a lumberjack camp minister in his “The Sky Pilot’s Page” in The Northeastern Logger’s July 1952 issue: “The foreman was pleasant enough and cordial but he had an idea that a church was the only proper place for the preacher to exercise his talents. I did not argue the question with him. It was his camp and he had a right to run it as he saw fit; but, when I bade him good-bye the next morning, I said, ‘I will be around again in a couple of months and I will come in and see how you are getting along.’ ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘come in any time you are in these parts. You will be welcome.’”

Reed had great respect for the men and women who worked in the woods. Religious activities were much more a part of the logging camp scene than one might think. Most loggers grew up in families with some religious background, and so had some early Christian training. Therefore, a minister who came into camp was well-received.

Rev. Reed was proud of his “sky pilot” or traveling preacher status. He traveled from back woods camp to camp on foot, riding “tote teams,” and later by car and in log trucks. He offered Christian education and led bunkhouse congregations in song and prayer; he comforted and consoled, distributed Bibles and reading matter and listened to whatever the men wanted to talk about. Always teaching, always inspiring, Reed told stories that imparted messages that could be applied to one’s life.

While The Northern Logger is no longer a religious publication, it does seek to follow Rev. Reed’s legacy and publish stories about the industry that can help loggers and timber processors live better lives. I hope this column on the history of the industry can be a part of that fine tradition.

COURTESY PHYLLIS WHITE, EXECUTIVE COORDINATOR NYS WOODSMEN’S FIELD DAYS, INC.

Rev. Frank A. Reed being interviewed by WPIBSWatertown, N.Y. about his popular “Lumberjack Sky Pilot” film he made during the 1930s and 1940s.

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A Look Back In Time – In Conversation with Adirondack Author William J. O’Hern

August 24, 2021September 18, 2022 Lucinda

The first time I met William J. “Jay” O’Hern, it was in The Northern Logger offices in Old Forge, New York.

A Look Back In Time

In Conversation with Adirondack Author William J. O’Hern

An article by Eileen Townsend printed in “The Northern Logger “, June 2021

The first time I met William J. “Jay” O’Hern, it was in The Northern Logger offices in Old Forge, New York. The Northern Logger keeps an archive of old publications, dating back to 1939, in our basement, and O’Hern was in the office for research purposes. At the time, he was hard at work compiling the stories and photographs that now make up his 500+ page book, Adirondack Timber Cruising. O’Hern is a prolific author whose work is well known in the Adirondacks, and his interests aren’t limited to logging. But he has written several informative and richly detailed volumes that catalogue the lives and times of Adirondack foresters and loggers. The topic clearly remains a compelling one for him.

As the title suggests, Adirondack Timber Cruising is about the development of timber cruising, logging, forestry and our relationship to our physical environment. In the book, through narratives of everyday lives, O’Hern attempts to show that conservation is concerned with our spiritual and mental as well as our material welfare. It is not enough to use forest resources wisely, with the idea that forestry is an end in itself, but rather the end is greater human happiness through wise forest management. O’Hern’s book is concerned with the people who lived and worked in the timber woods before chainsaws and trucks, who witnessed firsthand how mechanization changed everything.

I spoke with O’Hern about his fascination with logging culture and what drew him to write Adirondack Timber Cruising, which followed his earlier book on logging, Life in a North Woods Lumber Camp. As of 2021, the prolific author is looking toward is fourth volume on logging, called The Adirondack Logging Industry. He said that he never meant to write three volumes on the subject, but after he got started, there was simply too much history to relay. As is usually the case in the timber industry, the work continues.

Construction of a bridge over the Indian River in the Moose River Plains by Gould Paper Company, circa. late 1940s.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Northern Logger: What first interested you in writing about logging?

Jay O’Hern: It had to do with my first occupation. When I was 21, I worked at a sawmill in New York. It was hard manual work, but for one reason or another, I enjoyed the work. Listening to the older fellows talk got me more interested in the cycle that the industry had gone through over the decades from horse logging to mechanization. I only worked there for about a year. Unfortunately, their debarker caught fire, the mill burned to the ground, and I moved on. But I was hooked on logging after that. Once I moved to Camden, New York, I met a lot of people who were loggers or former loggers and worked in logging camps. Hearing their tales helped turn back the time and took me away – turning back the years. There were no books to document their memories. These people were dying, and with them the human history.

I started interviewing with really no idea of writing. But as more and more of them passed away, I thought, I’ve got to do something with their stories because I owe it to their memory. So, I just embarked on writing. Luckily, I had written some other books. I’m not trained as a writer at all, but based on my experience with the process of writing, I knew I could put together books that would carry on the life of the people who had passed away.

NL: You’re obviously a very thorough researcher. What have you learned about the relevance of historical research today?

JO: One thing I noted talking to older loggers is how much enjoyment they expressed about their work. It didn’t matter how hard the manual labor was or whether they used powered machinery. They loved their work. Maybe the average person thinks about logging, “Why would they like this kind of work? It’s so darn hard and demanding!” But, as I learned in these interviews, it was just something that they cherished. They also cherish the fact they wanted to have a sustainable supply to timber.

NL: What draws you to writing about everyday life?

JO: I’m fascinated by the memorabilia. I love thinking about how the logging industry has changed over time. There are men and women involved in the logging industry who worked with oxen, then horses, and then from there went to mechanical machinery. I know a number of people who collect vintage logging machinery and equipment. I’ve gone on several trips to unearth what I call “the ghosts of logging.” In fact, one logger called me last night and said he heard there was a Linn tractor back in the woods. I’ve gone on these bushwhacks for years, hunting for these ghosts that are supposed to be left back in the woods. Most of the time we don’t find them. But there have been gems we have found. Loggers and even people who aren’t loggers can appreciate the early machinery and how it functions. I meet people at book signings with white collar occupations and no connection to the logging world at all, but they’re just interested! I’m happy to have put the books together because everything that I’ve collected would have been gone if it hadn’t been published, and people would know very little about the everyday lives of these folks.

NL: Based on your historical knowledge of the Adirondacks, where do you think the industry is headed today?

JO: I’m hopeful that it is headed in a good direction. I’ve seen so many forests that were under the protection of various logging companies go back to “Forever Wild.” But I think the industry is smart enough to survive whatever comes its way. No matter how big and expensive the machinery is, we know we’re going to have logging. For the most part, I think companies that now have large preserves are looking toward the future. That’s only based on what I see around around New York’s Tug Hill region. It’s changing a lot because one man can do the work of many men in the past, and it’s getting very expensive for that one- or two-man operation. You see the cost of the equipment is hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you only hope that the logger isn’t going to destroy the property for the initial cash out.

NL: What else should our readers know about your work?

JO: I love including pictures in my books! Pictures can say a thousand words, and I have been fortunate to be able to collect a large number of pictures taken mostly by people who were in the woods. People want to have books with pictures to help visualize the logging industry, to understand the lifestyle, the hardships and the interest they have in doing that type of work. I want my legacy to be that I’ve taken the time sharing these people’s lives and their type of work and how the industry has changed. That’s the history in me, the history of the average man and woman. You can find political history all over, but you can’t find the kind of human history that I’ve done, which is about the common day people.

When developing my books, I experienced lumber camp life, accounts of river drives, the passing of old-style logging with oxen and horses, shared their remembrances, learned about the rise of diesel and gas-powered machinery and even prepared some popular camp recipes. How cool is that? And, while decades have passed, I still picture Norm Griffin in Camp 9’s bunk room talking about hula girls and his plan of flying to Hawaii; then old George’s story of how he swore the camp cook eliminated gas from his bean soup. There was Ed Raymond’s tale of an American bedbug; tough Rita Chisson’s rules that kept the lumberjacks in line during mealtime. I could go on and on about the work, accidents, light-humored moments and white-water tragedies. I think Conse Delutis expressed the admiration toward all lumberjacks best: “They were a sturdy, hard-talking lot with hearts of gold, men who would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it but show you no mercy if you tangled with them. Men [and women] you’d like to know.”

During the writing process, I also did a lot of thinking about my pastoral homeland and asking, “How important is protecting open space and the nation’s forests for tomorrow’s children?” I confess I am heartsick when longtime farms shut down and plant and wildlife habitat is destroyed with each new development. People must strike a balance between abundant lives, the natural world and leaving a heritage for future generations.

The Gould Lumber Company followed strict standards when developing their haul road that reached deep into the Moose River Plains

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