Remember When?

W.B. RUSSELL TIMBERMAN

By Mike Scott contributor to The Plainsman

An attempt will be made to portray a typical lumber camp as it was shortly after the beginning of the twentieth century, the personnel required to operate such an establishment and some of the customs. After selecting a site with an eye to the relative level topography and the proximity of a suitable water supply, construction of the buildings was started. Building material consisted almost exclusively of rough, green lumber which, as the hot days of summer wore on, began to warp and shrink until cracks opened up through which the lumberjacks claim a tom cat could be thrown through. The more elite camps might even be covered on the exterior with tar paper, the only insulation available at that time. The camp complex consisted of an office building normally housing a sparse commissary stocked only with bare essentials, such as Copenhagen, various brands of tobacco and a few items of clothing. A short distance away was the cookhouse and dining hall, and arranged in a row were sufficient bunkhouses to provide living quarters for the crew. These structures might house as many as 40 men with double wooden bunks arranged along each wall. The raucous snoring of two score lumberjacks was often loud enough to cause the roof to shake. Also by Saturday night an odor might permeate the vicinity and Sunday was bath day and wash day for the jacks.

As close as possible to the bunkhouse sat the privy with as many seats as necessary. Beside the comfort station, a bath and wash house existed. In the earlier camps water for these chores were heated on a wood burning stove and the jacks furnished their own laundry detergent. Also close at hand was an ample tool shed where paraphernalia incidental to logging was stored. Under this roof could be found grinding tools and racks where axes and saws were sharpened daily. A blacksmith shop with its forge, anvil and other accouterments was a vital facility as it was here that the numerous draft horses were shod and various special tools were fabricated by the smithy, usually an artful tradesman.

At the edge of the camp was the largest building of the complex, the horse barn. In so far as possible it was adjacent to an adequate water supply for the animals and contained space for hay and grain to sustain the draft horses. The animals, furnishing the power required to move logs were prized possessions of the owners. Costing a minimum of $500 per team, the animals were carefully tended, often receiving better treatment than the humans who labored in the camp. In order to be effective, the stock had to be large and powerful, ranging from 1,700 to 2,400 pounds apiece.

As far as the actual labor force was concerned, it consisted primarily of unmarried men who spent their lives in the camps with the exception of trips to the cities and towns for the purpose of "blowing in." The owner usually employed a foreman and several straw bosses to oversee the efforts of the crews. These were generally experienced woodsmen capable of getting the best efforts from the men and who had the responsibility of laying out the work and devising procedures and methods to insure its execution. The actual work was done by a variety of specialists.

Sawyers worked in two-man crews and felled the trees and sawed them into 16' and 18' lengths using a cross cut saw for the purpose. Such saws or "fiddles" as the lumberjacks called them were five to six feet in length and were operated solely by manpower until the 1940s when Husqvarna and McCulloch devised a means of motorization that produced considerable more sawdust in a given time than two husky Scandinavians could generate. The sawyers were the first piece workers to ply their trade in the industry. For their efforts they received $1.00 per thousand board feet, or sometimes they were paid 25 cents per log. Their operation probably required limbing and clearing the brush from a skid trail. In some operations an axeman or swamper was assigned to each saw crew to do the limbing and clearing job. The crews operated within the boundaries of strips of terrain assigned to them by the woods boss. A sharp saw would last a half day, being replaced or resharpened at noon. Logs were then measured by an employee known as a scaler and it was on his records that the sawyers were paid.

Continued next week