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LOGGING THE PACIFIC SLOPES 



NEWELL L. WRIGHT 



Lumbering started on the west coast 

 about 1850, in the days of the Gold 

 Rush. Sawmill machinery was brought 

 around Cape Horn from the East in 

 sailing vessels. The first mills were for 

 medium and small-sized timbers. Logs 

 were furnished by farmers and land 

 clearers from the timbered areas that 

 adjoined navigable waters wherever it 

 was cheaper to put them in a stream 

 than to pile them for burning. Much of 

 this was done with the ax, saw, and log 

 jack, toil and sweat, grunt and groan. 



The start was small but, step by step, 

 production increased, and machinery 

 was built to saw the larger logs. This 

 called for more power in the woods. 



Timber was abundant much too 

 much for the early settler, whose first 

 thought was food and whose first prob- 

 lem was to find unforested areas or 

 clear fields for farming. Fire was the 

 great land clearer, and in the early 

 1850's great forests went up in smoke. 

 Soon the timber line receded, and the 

 ox team and skid road came into being. 

 The big timber started moving to the 

 crack of the bull whip and the roar of 

 the puncher. 



Horses followed the ox team ; as pro- 

 duction increased, speed as well as 

 power was needed. The proper appli- 

 cation of gravity was the influencing 

 factor in logging with the ox and horse 

 team. Grades favorable with the load 

 were necessary, but logging shows were 

 plentiful, and no great engineering 

 skill was needed. 



A good woodsman usually the fore- 

 man did the locating. Rough ground 

 and poor timber stands were bypassed. 

 Only the high-quality timber was cut, 

 and only the best logs were removed. 

 The margin between costs and recovery 

 value was low, and low-grade material 

 could be handled only at a loss. Fire 

 ravaged much of the lands that were 

 so handled ; some remained in fair con- 

 dition, and new growth was started; 



practically all reverted to the counties 

 for nonpayment of taxes. 



As the demand for lumber increased 

 and transportation facilities (such as 

 adequate ports for seagoing vessels and 

 transcontinental railroads for land 

 shipments) became available, domestic 

 and foreign markets expanded. More 

 production was needed. In logging this 

 meant greater increases in speed and 

 power. In the early eighties there was 

 much timber near the mills, but some 

 of it was on ground unsuitable for ox- 

 or horse-team logging. Of the various 

 steam-powered machines that came 

 into use, the most successful was the 

 donkey engine, which had a horizontal 

 drum and a vertical-type boiler. 



Because it had been a slow and la- 

 borious job to haul the felled and 

 bucked timber to the skid roads, the 

 first donkey engines supplanted the 

 horses and oxen in this work. They 

 were strong enough to pull logs out of 

 canyons with little application of 

 blocks, which often were necessary 

 when horses and oxen were used. For 

 some time the animals were still used 

 for skid-road work and for hauling the 

 logs to the water. The donkey engine 

 yarded the big logs to the road and 

 made up the turn for its trip to the 

 water. It was soon found that a ma- 

 chine could do it faster, however, so 

 reading donkeys were built. These 

 machines were bolted to huge log sleds, 

 which made good foundations and 

 made the unit easily movable in the 

 woods. The unit was moved by hang- 

 ing a block some distance ahead and 

 running the main drum line out 

 through the block, then back to the 

 sled; it was made fast on the sled 

 runner. By applying steam to roll the 

 drum, the unit would be moved toward 

 the block. It simply pulled itself by 

 its own power. 



The reading donkey was built with 

 huge drums, which had a great line 



