LOGGING A RIVER BOTTOM 



267 



FROM RIVER BANK TO SAWMILL. 



Hundreds and hundreds of carloads have been taken from the bottom of the river and shipped by rail 



to the sawmills. 



Dr. Blodgett, commonly known as the 

 "Doc," a nickname given to him when 

 a young man. Long ago he was laid 

 away to rest with other prominent 

 lumbermen, such as Ryerson, Hill and 

 Charles H. Hackley, who accumulated 

 upwards of $9,000,000. Few people 

 have done more for a city than Mr- 

 Hackley has done. He did philan- 

 thropic work for Muskegon on a grand 

 scale, and left by his will more than 

 $2,000,000 for the establishment of li- 

 braries, hospitals, art gallery, training 

 schools and other things of public 

 benefit. 



Mr. Hackley was the first man to 

 erect a monument to President McKin- 

 ley. 



Probably the credit for the first sug- 

 gestion of this novel method of rais- 

 ing logs from the river bed belongs 

 to Mr. John Torrent, who is yet living 

 at the age of eighty-two years and is 

 still an active man. He interested Mr. 

 James Gow, of Muskegon, Mich., in 

 the proposition, after he had been in 

 the lumbering business for more than 

 thirty years in partnership with Mr- 

 John Campbell. In the year 1912, Mr. 

 Gow bought out Mr. Campbell's inter- 

 est with this proposition in view and 

 says that he feels well pleased with the 

 plan. 



The old lumbermen, wLh possibly a 

 few exceptions, came to Muskegon 

 when they were young, and having 

 plenty of energy and brains, lifted 

 themselves from poverty into financial 

 prominence. A story of those exciting 

 lumbering days would not be complete 

 without mention of Jonathan Boyce. 

 He, with others, overcame many ob- 

 stacles in those pioneer times. One 

 that Mr. Gow had to contend against 

 was the claim that, because these logs 

 have lain for so long a time in the 

 river with apparently no ownership, 

 any person had the right to salvage and 

 keep them. One sawmill started in to 

 cut up some of these logs without se- 

 curing any right or title, but Mr- Gow 

 got ahead of them by buying up the 

 marks from the heirs and then fought 

 the matter in the courts. In 1908 Mr. 

 Gow was successful in the supreme 

 court of Michigan, winning a suit that 

 firmly established his claim to logs 

 bearing marks that he owned, and he 

 now has the entire right of way in this 

 novel lumbering from the bed of the 

 rivers. 



The astonishing fact is that the lum- 

 ber produced from these logs is of 

 pretty nearly as good quality as when 

 they were first cut and for some pur- 

 poses equally good 



