HARDWOOD RECORD 



34c 



dam that was designed t6 splash out a million dollars worth of 

 poplar timber annually, was inducement enough for him to catch 

 the first train headed toward the operation. After reaching the 

 saw milling point on the Ohio river, it was a full day's journey 

 on the tortuous one-hundredandfifty-mile stretch of the railroad 

 up the Big Sandy, the dividing line between Kentucky and West 

 Virginia, to its terminus against the solid embattlement of rock — 

 the Cumberland mountainLJ. From this point it was a tote-wagon 

 ride across the mountains over a road that had no license to bo 

 designated as such. 



The destination was "headquarters camp," a crude cabin in 

 the very heart of the mountains from which went forth directions 

 for the clearing of the poplar timber from fifteen thousand acres 

 of land in a single season. 



The big lumberman and his staff of cruisers, woods bosses, 

 railroad men, mechanics, swampers, choppers, teamsters, cooks 

 and men-of -all-work had come into this unbroken wilderness 

 less than nine months before, and had nearly accomplished the task 

 set before them. Into Dickinson county, in southwestern Vir- 

 ginia, an area one-fourth the size of Ehode Island, containing 

 not a mile of railroad or other transportation facilities, these 

 woodsmen had come bent on a gigantic and risky undertaking. 



Scores of tote-teams were employed to drag along the trails 

 portable sawmills for the making of wooden tram rails; food 

 supplies for hundreds of men and mules; logging locomotives, 

 tools, and all the rest of the necessary pai'aphernalia. Beyond all 

 this building of a great concrete dam across the main stem of the 

 Big Sandy was undertaken. For more than six months relays 

 of four-mule teams were employed in hauling cement across the 

 broken country to the dam site, and scores of men were em- 

 ployed in its building. 



For a certainty transportation facilities of some sort had to be 

 devised to take this forest wealth out through the hitherto im- 

 passible Breaks. It was an experiment, and it took courage to 

 invest more than a million dollars in logs piled in a gorge of a 

 mountain stream, which never had delivered more than ten per 

 cent of those put into it. 



The crude log camp "shacks" where these stalwart denizens of 

 the forest were housed would scarcely appeal to the resident of 

 a modern city apartment, but here these husky woodsmen, often 

 accompanied by their wives and children, took up their temporary 

 abode year after year as the forest was penetrated farther and 

 farther. 



TWO VETERANS. A SEVEN HUNDRED YEAR OLD YELL(J\V POP- 

 LAR AND A WELL-KNOWN MOUNTAINEER OF THE OLD SCHOOL 



To those who have never seen a virgin forest tree it is a revela- 

 tion. The widely branching, short-bodied park tree bears little 

 resemblance to the monarch of the forest. The bark, the leaves 

 and the flowers are the same, but here the similarity ends. The 

 Almighty planted these trees in the remote ages. They strove 

 upwards, and certain particularly favored ones outstripped the 

 others. The.v covered the minor growth with their shade, weakened 

 it and killed it. These great pojjlars of the upper Big Sandy are 

 the survival of the fittest, and stretch skyward until often they 

 rise to a height of two hundred feet, with trunks from three to 

 seven feet in diameter. They are straight, bark-covered giants, 

 and their foliage is so far distant that its form of leaf scarcely 

 can be recognized. 



To the layman the felling of one of these trees with axe and 

 cross-cut saw is an alluring sight. When the great tree falls it 

 crashes among the smaller growth, and its resounding impact 

 with the earth jars and reverberates through the mountain coves. 

 After the body of the tree is cut to log lengths, the bark is re- 

 moved (or "scalped" as the local vernacular has it) so that they 

 may be hauled more easily, and also to eliminate the danger of 

 borers working under the bark and injuring the sap-wood. Each 





WITH THE AID OF \ CONCRETE SPLASH DAM, K50 FEET IN LENGTH AND L'.j FEET IN HEIGHT, LOCATED ONE-HALF MILE BELOW 

 THIS LOG DUMP, THESE LOGS WERE DRIVEN THROUGH THE BREAKS OF BIG SANDY RIVER TO PIKEVILLE, KY., AND THERE RAFTED 

 AND FLOATED DOWN TO THE OHIO RIVER AT CATLETTSBURG, KY. 



