672 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



From River Bank to Sawmill. 



hundreds and hundreds of car loads have been taken from the bottom of the river and shipped_by rail 



to the sawmills. 



more for a city than Air. Hackley has 

 done. He did philanthropic work for 

 Muskegon on a grand scale, and left by 

 his will more than $2,000,000 for the 

 establishment of libraries, 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 in- 

 terest with this proposition in view and 

 says that he feels well pleased with the 

 plan. 



The old lumberman, with possibly a 

 few exceptions, came to Aluskegon 

 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- 

 cluring 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 bear- 

 ing 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 fnom these logs is of 

 pretty nearly as good quality as when 

 they were first cut and for some pur- 

 poses equally good. 



