March 10, 1910 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



22a 



l.\ IIAKliWDOI) .SECTION" KU; LAKK LUMI'.EK COlirANV YAKU 



woods operations of the Rib Lake Lumber Company, some nine miles 

 from the town of Rib Lake. There are two things in Wisconsin, indi- 

 genous to that state only, and but few of the natives have ever had the 

 privilege of gazing upon them — namely, the reputed "Hodag, " and 

 the centipede tractor utilized in some winter logging operations. 

 The latter of these curiosities through Mr. Harder 's invitation was 

 first seen by many of the loggers. The centipede tractor has been 

 utilized by a few companies operating in Wisconsin for a great 

 many years, and the pious folk of bygone days must surely have 

 thought it an instrument of old Beelzebub, for it snorts and toots 

 and has a world of power, snaking long sled trains of logs, inter- 

 spersed with a load of hemlock bark, over the hills and through 

 the woods with great eclat, over the necessary private right of way. 

 As will be observed in the picture, this "mule" is a locomotive 

 on which a pair of runners has been substituted for the front pony 

 trucks, and the drivers by a tractor tread. A speed of four to six 

 miles per hour is easily maintained on level roads pulling 80,000 

 feet of logs and a car or two of tanning bark, but in hauling such 

 a train it is necessary to double over the hills. On account of 

 doubling the hills only one round trip per day is possible; a train 

 of this size is handled only by the night crew, but this gives ample 

 time to inspect equipment and get it in good shape for the day 

 crew. The day crew makes two round trips daily, but handling 

 only half the size load hauled by the night force. The mil! of the 

 Rib Lake Lumber Company is situated on the border of Rib Lake 

 in the town of Rib Lake, and the logs are not hauled direct to the 

 mill via the Snow Road & Centipede, but to the edge of the lake, 

 about three-quarters of a mils from the mill, and thence by team 

 onto the ice surface of the lake, and unloaded preparatory to the 

 usual spring delivery. The company also operates a logging road 

 direct to the mill; in all some twenty miles of road, and additional 



LOG TKAI.N HEADY Ft)U TRIP TO RIB LAKE 



mileage into the timber surveyed. This line is equipped with three 

 logging engines, about 150 logging cars and twenty-iive bark cars. 



Howsomever, this Wednesday morning, Old Sol was shining 

 his brightest, though Jack Frost was doing his bliglitest, and withal 

 it was a wonderful day for a picnic, for such are these pleasure 

 trips with a seasoning of business. About twenty-five Wisconsin 

 loggers wended their way around the edge of Rib Lake to the 

 terminus of the S. R. & C, and ere long a shrill whistle announced 

 the arrival of a train of logs; the mule was soon uncoupled and 

 swung around to a train of empties, the last sled of which was a 

 bark car, and onto this the loggers were bustled, bag and baggage, 

 and with a jerk they were on their way over a wonderful roadbed 

 of snow and ice, o'er hill and down dale, through barren cutover 

 lands blanketed with snow garnished with stumps and an occa- 

 sional coppice, and thence through a wilderness of small hemlock 

 in a dazzling coat of "ermine too dear for an earl." 



A temperature of sixty degrees below freezing is not conducive 

 to a display of silk shirts nor blooming roses, and though fur coats, 

 mackinaws and all else that tends to retain warmth were in ple- 

 thoric evidence, the party was inclined to again resort to stunts of 

 boyhood days, first to keep up a good circulation, and secondly 

 because a man is only a big boy, and thus they were again hopping 

 bobs, running races and the like. And when it comes to hopping 

 bobs, they all took off their hats to R. B. Goodman of the Goodman 

 Lumber Company, Marinette, Wis., for he surely must have been 

 an expert when he was a kid. Mr. B. Clubine of the Park Falls 

 Lumber Company, Park Falls, and G. W. Campbell of Park Falls 

 were running races without bets, and, either because there was too 

 much freight or too little wind, gave up when J. D. Twoniey came 

 into competition. 



SWAN (LI(;iIT COAT) EXPLAINS THAT 30 P.ELOW ISN'T COLD 



RIB LAKE LI'MBER CO.MPANY SAWMILL AT RIB LAKE 



