Lumber camp

“ Stranion and the O. M. know all about that; but the rest of you fellows never go to the lumber-camps, you know.
“To one who visits the winter camps here in our backwoods, the life led by the loggers is likely to seem monotonous after the strangeness of it has worn off. The sounds of the chopping, the shouting, the clanking of the teams, afford ample warning to all the wild creatures of the woods, who thereupon generally agree in giving a wide berth to a neighborhood which has suddenly grown so populous and noisy. ”

“ Some of the lumbermen said the same thing, adding that not unless they were cornered would a bobcat attack a man. So Ted was really not in as much danger as he had tried to think he was. Still it was scary enough for the little chap.
Work at the lumber camp went on from day to day. Dozens of great trees were chopped down to be sawed up into boards. Quite a pile of sawdust was mounting near the mill now, and the children loved to play in this. They would climb to a point near the top of the pile. ”

“ Eight million feet of logs lay on the ice, filling Silver Creek bankful like a black flood for a long half-mile. Not that this had been accomplished without friction. Such jettison of humanity as drifts to a lumber-camp does not shake down to work in a day. From earth's four corners a gallows crew of Swedes, French, Russians, Irish, Canadians, Yankees drifted in, and for one month thereafter internecine war raged in the bunk-houses. Then, having bit, gouged, and kicked itself into some sort of a social status, the camp concentrated upon the boss. ”

“ The side which furnishes timber rises in terraces of gigantic proportions, forming a succession of abrupt precipices and shelving table-land. There are three of these giant mountain steps, each of which produces lumber which challenges the admiration and enterprise of the logmen. The ascent to these Alpine groves is too abrupt to allow the team to ascend in harness; we therefore unyoke and drive the oxen up winding pathways. The yokes and chains are carried up by the workmen, and also the bob-sled in pieces, after taking it apart. ”

“ To-day it is still the most practicable, durable, and simply constructed house invented for a forest home, and any boy can build a log-house large enough to form a comfortable camp for vacation days. For muscles unaccustomed to such exercise it is hard work to cut down large trees, and, unless the young woodsman has served an apprenticeship on a farm or in a lumber-camp, it is dangerous work to fell big timber ”

“ Personal experience leads me to believe that man is safe, nearly always, except when such animals are suffering from hunger.
Early one spring, while the snow was yet deep in the woods, I was scaling some trespass of timber that lay about three miles away from my headquarters camp. In going to my work, mornings, I passed along a trail near to which, in the deep snow, was the carcass of a horse which had belonged to the owner of a near-by lumber camp. ”

“ His history was never learned in full, but from an account of the animal, gained by questioning the Indians who had him in captivity, it was learned that the dog had belonged at some lumber camp. It often happens that the midday meal for most of the men in a large logging crew must be taken out on a sled, usually drawn by a single horse, for a distance of not infrequently three or four miles from the cook's camp. ”

“ I’m manager of a lumber camp over in the woods.”
“Oh, yours is the camp we have been looking for!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin.
“You’ve been looking for me?” echoed the man, who gave his name as Pat Teeter.
“We met some lumbermen on a raft going down the river,” explained Mr. Martin, telling about the dog who bit the auto tire. “They said you might let us inspect your camp.”
“Sure, I will. We’ll be glad to have you visit us!” declared Mr. Teeter. “There aren’t many men in camp now, and they’ll [190] be glad of company. We’re over in the woods about three miles from here.” ”

“ Then, winding in and out of the canyon through a foothill country, we made steady progress until we reached the main road from Raymond to Wawona. The grade was uphill all the time. We left the lumbering camp known as Sugar Pine to our right. The lumber interests have made a sad spectacle of miles and miles of country, recently heavily forested. There seems to be no idea in the lumberman's mind of saving the young growth when cutting the larger timber. ”

“ Lumber camps meant big men doing big things—things reeking with danger, such as falling trees, forest fires and log jams. There might also be hair-breadth escapes in the hunting of big game and the tramping of the vast wilderness. This dressing three times a day and spending the intermediate hours hitting wooden balls, or lounging in a straw chair under a deck awning, had become tiresome. ”

“ As this lumber began to pile up, he set the other Indians at work clearing a place among the heavier trees, but not far from the creek, for a sod house. It was to be some twenty feet square and was to house Colonel Snow’s lumbering gangs when they came in the following winter.
“‘Tenting on the old camp ground,’ ’s good enough, up here in the summer,” he said to the boys, “but with the mercury loafing around sixty below zero, canvas is no sort of shelter. A log house is better but it is almost impossible to make the caulking of that weather-proof. ”

“ Some of the camps contain as many as 300 or 400 men, and this force is kept busy during the entire winter cutting down trees, sawing them into logs, and hauling them to the river. Here they are placed in huge piles, and it is at this time that the log-mark of the owner is placed upon them by an individual known as the "scaler," whose duty it also is to measure the diameter of each log and keep a record of it.
In this article we show a few of these curious log-marks—odd artistic inventions of the untrained minds of the lumber-camps. There is no attempt at uniformity in ideas. ”

“ Zan and the Guide were soon in the low-ceiled cellar sorting pieces of lumber from a huge heap left there by the contractors when the old house was renovated. A number of desirable pieces were selected by Miss Miller who said, "We can take these pieces up to the back porch and take them to camp whenever we have need of them. I think we can make a number of articles that will prove useful." ”

“ On the second day after leaving home, the four chums found themselves upon what Bluff called the “last leg” of their railroad trip.
They were already in the State of Maine and heading north, bound for the station where they expected to get off, and somehow find their way to the place where Mr. Samuel Darrel, the well-known lumberman, was to be found, according to his letter to Uncle Felix.
This was a logging camp known as Lumber Run. It lay in the depths of the Big Woods, and was surrounded by a virgin growth of fine timber that would consume some years in the cutting. ”

“ The resources for lumber are still quite abundant. The West Machias stream is about the same size as the East, both being quite small; it has more numerous water privileges, and is more liable to be affected by droughts. Here the lumbering operations are carried on more vigorously than on the other river, cutting some two hundred thousand more to a saw. The greatest distance that lumber has been cut from the village is about sixty miles. Opinions the most reliable encourage the belief of the existence of sufficient timber to meet the demands of this market for years to come. ”

“ Of course if we had the time we could saw out lumber enough to make a ‘camp’ that would be weather proof, but the sod house is insured against fire, flood, lightning and wind and is as cosy as 103 a cave; besides, it takes a shorter time to build,” and with this the miner led the boys, with the exception of Gerald, who was to keep camp and oversee the four Indians left there, to the boats, one of which the other two Indians had unmoored, and when all were aboard, began to pole upstream. ”

“ A few years ago, it was permissible to build log camps on State lands. Recent laws forbid this, and now camping on forest land owned by the State is limited to the use of tents.
Now, when Bige and I decide to build a shack we select a spot on some lumber companies' property and then try to get from the owners, permission to build. Such a permit is usually not difficult to get, but one must always furnish evidence of his knowledge of woodcraft, especially of his ability to so construct a camp fireplace as to prevent the fire spreading to the woods and thus destroying a lot of property. ”

“ You see, we need to get into the skin of these folk. They can keep the booms full from these forests, and the kick only comes when the grinders get to work. Output falls automatically with the girth of the lumber sent down. It's a close calculation; but on the year it means a lot. I learned that from Mr. Osbert, at the mills on the Shagaunty. Well, so long as the booms are kept full, the camp bosses are satisfied. There's a limit below which the girth of logs may not go. They watch that limit, and are careful not to go below it. ”

“ As they are most roughly built of light lumber, and have plainly served in each of the previous camps this year, there is good profit to the speculators who supplied them in the first place, and who gather them up when they are abandoned at the breaking up of each camp, only to sell them again. ”

“ This scene took place on the edge of the clearing in the lumber camp, where the light was good. As the company carried no powerful electric lights with them, they had to depend on the sun, and in the depths of the woods there was not light enough for taking good pictures.
After some funny antics, the lumberman climbed the tree. Then another man began to chop it down. It did not take long, for the lumbermen know how to fell a tree in a few minutes. And as the big pine began to sway toward the earth, the trunk being almost cut through, Mr. ”

“ When thus prepared, these people proceed up the rivers with the provisions to the place fixed on for their winter establishment, which is selected as near a stream of water, and in the midst of as much pine timber, as possible. They commence by clearing away a few of the surrounding trees, and building a camp of round logs, the walls of which are seldom more than four or five feet high; the roof is covered with birch bark or boards. A pit is dug under the camp, to preserve any thing liable to injury from the frost. ”

“ In chopping and hauling logs the lumbermen are at work unremittingly from dawn until sun-down, and at night they have little energy to expend on the hunting of bears or panthers. The bunks and the blankets exert an overwhelming attraction; and by the time the men have concluded their after-supper smoke, and the sound of a few rough songs has died away, the wild beasts may creep near enough to smell the pork and beans, and may prowl about the camp until dawn, with small fear of molestation from the sleepers within. ”

“ Also, there is not enough plant food in the soil to sustain life in all the trees that get a start in the forest. Hence, it is, that in the older woods one can always find, still standing but dead and dry, half grown trees of all kinds. Of these, the hardwoods make the very best fuel for campfires. And a dead spruce six to ten inches in diameter makes excellent logs for building an open camp or a cabin. The smaller dry spruces, three to four inches in diameter, make better roof timbers than do green ones. ”

“ It is not worth while to say much about those hunters' camps which are built in the woods of stout poles, and covered with brush or the bark of trees: they are exceedingly simple in theory, and difficult in practice unless you are accustomed to using the axe. If you go into the woods without an axeman, you had better rely upon your tents, and not try to build a camp; for when done, unless there is much labor put in it, it is not so [Pg 70] good as a shelter-tent. You can, however, cut a few poles for rafters, and throw the shelter-tent instead of the bark or brush over the poles. ”

“ Some wooden tent-pins inclosing a few square yards of ground half covered with a bed of evergreen twigs, matted but still fresh and odorous, a litter of paper and powder-smirched rags, empty cans and boxes, a few sticks of fire wood, a blackened, primitive wooden crane, with its half-charred supporting crotches, and a smouldering heap of ashes and dying brands, mark the place of a camp recently deserted. ”

“ Acting on the information thus gained by the cruiser, the lumberman purchases his sections at the proper land office, or if he is less scrupulous, buys only enough to serve as a basis for operations. Enormous fortunes have been made by timber thieves, now respectable members of the community. As a further preliminary step to lumbering itself, the tote road and camp are built. The tote road is a rough road on which supplies for crew and cattle can be taken to camp from civilization. ”

“ Logs belonging to various individuals and firms in the lumber industry of the North Western United States are identified and separated in a striking fashion. To illustrate this it will be necessary to outline briefly the routine of work connected with the great lumbering industry of the regions mentioned. Logging camps are established in the heart of a forest. ”

“ The depressing opposite of the fire that is the warm heart of the camp is the pile of green or rain-soaked fuel that in spite of all coaxing and nursing refuses to yield a cheerful flame. Shavings from the resin-embalmed heart of a dead pine and scrolls of birch bark fail to enkindle it to more than flicker and smoke, while the wet and hungry campers brood forlornly over the cheerless centre of their temporary home, with watery eyes and souls growing sick of camp life. ”