147 



built. The first flume built for this purpose was in Washington 

 Territory. Next, a similar flume was built in Nevada, to transport 

 cord wood to Virginia City. Next came the Antelope flume, in this 

 State, terminating at Sesnia, soon followed by one extending from the 

 mountains to the headwaters of Butte Creek to Red Bluff, and by 

 another extending from the headwaters of Chico Creek to within a 

 few miles of Chico. The latter three flumes passed into the possession 

 of the Sierra Flume and Lumber Company two years ago, and that 

 corporation has extended and connected them so that they now form 

 large arteries for the transportation of lumber to the shops of Red 

 Bluff and Chico. The Chico flume is forty-five miles long, and carries 

 lumber into the company's yard. Lumber placed in the head of the 

 flume will be delivered at Chico in three and one-half hours. The 

 cost of transportation in this way is reduced to about seventy-five 

 cents per thousand feet. The flumes are constructed of plank thirty 

 inches wide and sixteen feet long, nailed together at the sides. The 

 trough thus formed is placed in brackets and a series of them forms 

 the channel into which the waters of a stream are turned. Men are 

 constantly employed watching the lumber as it comes down the 

 flumes, in order to prevent " bunching," and a footwalk is built along 

 the top of the flumes for their entire length. In some places the 

 flumes run over trestle work one hundred or one hundred and fifty 

 feet high ; and in some canons it may be seen fastened to the side of 

 an almost perpendicular wall. The company above named own over 

 one hundred and fifty miles of flume, and control a timber region 

 bounded on the west by the Sacramento River, on the south by Butte 

 Creek, on the east by the east branch of the south fork of the Amer- 

 ican River, and on the north by Battle Creek — fifty miles north and 

 south, and eighty miles east and west. About Deer Creek and Big 

 Meadows there are forty square miles of virgin timber land. By 

 this system of flumes the lumbering business is brought to perfection. 

 The whole system can be placed under the direct control of one man, 

 and everything regulated by telegraph. If an order comes in to the 

 office at Chico for a particular kind or size of lumber that is not in 

 the yard, a telegram to the mills will set men at work getting out 

 that particular kind, and in the course of four or five hours it will 

 reach the yard. 



HOW THE TREES ARE FELLED. 



The trees in these timber regions give logs from sixty to sixty-two 

 inches in diameter. The trees are not cut down with the ax, but are 

 sawed through, and sometimes a tree remains standing after the 

 trunk has been severed from the stump, and has to be wedged over. 

 The immense logs furnished by these trees are with difficulty loaded 

 upon the trucks, and in some instances tramways have to be built 

 from the log to the truck before it can be loaded. The mills are fur- 

 nished with gang-saws that cut up a whole log at once, circular saws, 

 and all of the modern improvements in mill machinery. The nine 

 mills of the Sierra Flume and Lumber Company produced last year : 

 Of sugar pine, eighteen million six hundred and seventy-nine thou- 

 sand nine hundred and four feet; mountain pine, fifteen million five 

 hundred and fifty-six thousand nine hundred and seventy-one; 

 spruce, six million two hundred and eighty-one thousand eight hun- 

 dred and sixty-seven; fir, one million sixty-eight thousand one hun- 



