Re: Unbelievable Horse Logging pic

Posted by Tom Olson on December 24, 2004 at 20:51:25 from (24.208.36.218):

In Reply to: Unbelievable Horse Logging pic posted by Nebraska Cowman on December 24, 2004 at 09:39:32:

N.C.

No trick photography needed.

My grandfather logged in the NW area of Michigan's UP in the late 1800's-early 1900's. Loggers could work in the swampy woods only after the ground was frozen. That being so, the skidding trails and main logging roads were sprayed with water to make ice roads. Summers, Gramps farmed, delivered mail, fished & whatever else needed to keep the family going. I've seen a couple of these tanker sleighs in UP logging museums; quite large but easily pulled by a team of horses.

Loads of logs like you see in the pictures were skidded either to a rail head or, most often up here were piled on the bank of a river to await the spring thaw when they would be floated downstream to the sawmills. In the 1880s, the lumbering stream in the Upper Peninsula that carried the most timber was the Menominee River, the boundary between Michigan and Wisconsin. Dozens of sawmills dominated the economy of the twin cities of Marinette, WI and Menominee, MI (my home town), which straddle the river. In 1891, the peak year, 642 million board feet of pine was cut on the Menominee alone. White pine made Michigan the biggest lumber producing state from 1860 till 1910. Much of the lumber used to rebuild Chicago after the great 1871 fire came from the mills at the mouth of the Menominee River.

Tom

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