688 



Yearbook^ of Agriculture 1949 



of their new-found supply. Suitable 

 trees in the New England forests were 

 marked with the King's broad arrow 

 and thus reserved for the exclusive use 

 of the Royal Navy. 



The colonists used logging equip- 

 ment and methods of rudimentary 

 character. The early mills and shipping 

 docks were mostly on tidewater. Heavy 

 stands of timber grew on stream banks 

 or on slopes from which logs could 

 readily be put in water by hand and 

 then floated to mills or shipside. Tim- 

 ber that was more distant from the 

 watercourses and hardwood logs that 

 would not float had to be skidded 

 either by the brute strength of men or 

 by use of the oxen that pulled the 

 farmers' plows. The colonists soon 

 found that skidding could be done most 

 easily on ice and snow, and wintertime 

 became the traditional season for such 

 work. Scandinavian and Dutch colo- 

 nists added their skill to the more scanty 

 experience of the English. 



NEW METHODS have developed, al- 

 though some of the pioneers' practices 

 are still used throughout the country 

 principally on small jobs. The ax and 

 the ox team are primitive logging tools, 

 but they can still be found at work in 

 the woods. The ax has been improved 

 in design and quality of its steel. Mod- 

 ern metallurgy has enabled the manu- 

 facturer to make a top-grade tool every 

 time, something not possible when ax- 

 heads were forged by hand ; some were 

 good and some were poor. When a 

 logger got hold of a really good ax he 

 guarded it jealously and might even 

 take it to bed with him. The crosscut 

 saw, introduced about 75 years ago, 

 was at first a crude cutting tool. 



The modern crosscut saw is made of 

 excellent steel, holds its set and cutting 

 edges well, and runs freely in the cut. 

 The peavey, invented about 85 years 

 ago by a blacksmith in Stillwater, 

 Maine, has made the work of rolling 

 logs by hand easier and safer. The pulp 

 hook, the bow saw, the explosive 

 wedge, and even the tractor, the power 

 saw, and the motortruck are becoming 



commonplace throughout the country, 

 even on small logging jobs. 



But it is in the bigger operations that 

 revolution after revolution in logging 

 methods has taken place. Big-time log- 

 ging had its origin in Maine, where 

 heavy stands of pine and spruce, water- 

 courses leading to good harbors on tide- 

 water, and long, cold winters when 

 little else could be done provided a fa- 

 vorable environment. The Machias, 

 the Penobscot, the Kennebec, and the 

 Androscoggin watersheds were the 

 nursery from which came a new tech- 

 nique of logging and a tribe of loggers 

 that later fanned out to other timber 

 regions across the continent. 



Maine loggers developed the art of 

 chip-chopping in felling trees and in 

 cutting them into logs. They learned to 

 take advantage of gravity and snow 

 and ice in skidding the logs to water- 

 courses. They developed the art of 

 driving the logs down the streams to 

 sorting booms at tidewater. Living in 

 rough camps far back from the towns 

 and farming country, they were a 

 tough and hardy brood now well 

 celebrated in song and story. 



But their very energy and efficiency 

 in time brought about depletion of the 

 accessible large virgin pine and spruce 

 of that State. 



THE CENTER of large-scale lumber- 

 ing began to move westward first to 

 the headwaters of the Connecticut, 

 then the Hudson, and then the Susque- 

 hanna and the Ohio. Rafting was de- 

 veloped on the more placid waters of 

 the Susquehanna and Ohio, not only 

 to keep the logs together but also to 

 keep afloat the choice hardwoods that 

 were bound into the rafts with the pine. 

 Winter logging and stream driving 

 were developed still further in the Lake 

 States to keep pace with the increasing 

 capacity of the sawmills and the ever- 

 expanding demand for lumber. There, 

 too, the first logging railroad came into 

 use, and cable skidding was developed. 



As the virgin timber stands of the 

 Lake States neared depletion, the tide 

 of the lumber-industry migration split. 



