LOGGING IN THE DOUGLAS FIR REGION. 
57 
ure per horse. A team on a road of this character consisted of from 
5 to 10 yoke of oxen or from 4 to 14 horses. 
ENGINES. 
The first patent on power skidding machinery in the United States 
was granted in 1883, and covered an overhead cableway system to 
get logs out of potholes and swampy places. It was tried out in the 
cypress forests of North Carolina, with the machines mounted on 
scows and floated in the bayous and sloughs. It did not completely 
solve the problem, since its range was limited to 700 or 800 feet. 
A ground yarding system was operated in a Louisiana swamp in 
1889. It consisted of two large drums and an engine and boiler 
mounted on a scow, from which what in effect was an endless cable 
passed out into the forest for a distance of half a mile. This later 
developed into the system used on pull boats. 
Fig. 14. — Yarding engine and sled. 
Power yarding was first used in the Douglas fir forests of the 
Pacific coast in 1890, or one or two years before, in connection with 
a ground rope system. One vertical-windlass and one link-motion 
vertical engine, attached to an upright boiler was mounted on a sled, 
from which a single line was passed into the woods by horsepower. 
The spool was driven directly by a pinion and wheel, both of which 
were bevel cored. This system was first used in California about 
1885. 
Power yarding was superior to animal yarding from the begin- 
ning, and its popularity resulted in comparatively few horses or oxen 
being used in the Douglas fir region by 1900. The gradual evolu- 
tion of logging engines has given the industry the compound-geared, 
ground-yarding engine and the long-range, high-speed roading 
engine, both of which seem to have reached perfection, also fairly 
satisfactory overhead and high-lead logging engines, which without 
doubt are susceptible of further improvement. 
