The Lumberjack Sky PilotWhittles, Thomas D. (Thomas Davis)
History
The Lumberjack Sky Pilot
Whittles, Thomas D. (Thomas Davis)
Church work with loggers -- Minnesota; Higgins, Francis Edmund, 1865-1915; Presbyterian Church -- Clergy -- Biography
When a lumber company contemplates logging in a given locality, a
cruiser is sent through the forest to estimate the amount of lumber it
will cut. After the report of the cruiser has been received, a crew
of experienced woodsmen follows, and selects the place for the camp
or camps, and lays out the logging roads. This latter is not an easy
task, although to the inexperienced it seems to be, for the road must
be as nearly level as the possibilities of the land will allow. A
hill to be surmounted means a reducing of the size of the load and an
increase in the cost of hauling; a grade scarcely enough to be noticed
in ordinary traffic also adds danger and uncertainty to the haul. If
there is a grade, its descent must be towards the landing, hence the
need of skilled road-makers. It is in the early fall of the year that
these logging roads are made. Trees are felled, every stump is removed
and the little hills are leveled until there appears in the forest a
broad, level, often winding avenue that suggests a city speedway. When
the cold binding wind of the north has frozen hill and glen and the
swamp lands have become resistant to the tread, the rut cutter is sent
over the newly made roads. This heavy, unsightly piece of mechanism
cuts a deep groove or rut in each side of the road. Later these ruts
are partly filled with water and in the icy track the great runners of
the heavy logging sleds travel with ease and safety. The logging sleds
are huge affairs. The runners are eight feet long. The weight of the
sled with its chains is about thirty-five hundred pounds--a good load
in itself under normal conditions. On these sleds the logs are hauled
to the landing, and from there pass by stream or rail to the distant
sawmills.
The camp is generally placed near the center of the land or on an
elevation convenient to water. The buildings of the camp consist of
a cookshed made large enough for cooking and dining-room purposes, a
bunkhouse to house the men, a blacksmith shop, barns and office. All
these are built of logs chinked with clay, and are quite warm, if
properly constructed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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