A logging camp (or lumber camp) is a transitory work site used in the logging industry. Before the second half of the 20th century, these camps were the primary place where lumberjacks would live and work to fell trees in a particular area. Many place names (e.g. Bockman Lumber Camp, Whitestone Logging Camp, Camp Douglas) are legacies of old logging camps. Camps were often placed next to river tributaries so that the winter's log harvest could be floated to the lumbermills in the spring.
The requirements of the logging industry involved the creation of a working site and housing from the pristine wilderness. The construction of the logging camp consisted of a transformation of the natural environment to the built environment. [1] Logging was seasonal in nature, with farmers often working as lumberjacks during the winter. Camps were placed next to a river so that the logs harvested could be floated to the lumbermills in the spring. [2] By their nature logging camps were temporary work sites used to harvest lumber in remote areas. Once the lumber in a particular area was harvested, the lumberjacks would move on. [3]
Primitive sites had two buildings, a cookhouse and a bunkhouse. Larger camps also had an outhouse, barn, blacksmith shop, filer shack (to sharpen the saws), office and camp store. [2] Lumber cut by the lumberjacks was the source of the materials for the buildings, and camps were built in the fall prior to the winter logging season. Most of the lumberjacks would return to their jobs after the logging season, with a few staying on to drive logs in the spring. [4]
In the United States, logging camps were phased out after World War II, as work crews could more easily be transported to remote logging sites. [5]
Lumberjacks could work upwards of twelve hours a day, and lumbering was such physically demanding work that each man could eat between 6,000 to 9,000 calories a day. [6] [7] In one estimation, the average logger consumed 5 pounds (2.3 kg) of food each day. [7] Quality and quantity were important parts of maintaining the health and productivity of the workers. Meat, other foods high in protein, and fats were served in abundance. Sack lunches were provided to the loggers. During peak season, as many as five meals a day could be served. [7] Camp cooks were important to the morale of the workers. In some cases, workers would follow a cook to the camp they were working at each season. [2]
In Canada, the long distances to the camps and the closure of most access during the winter led to the development of depot farms that would be built near logging camps to supply cereals and vegetables to the loggers as well as food for horses in the form of hay and oats. These farms were often built on poor quality land and had little output other than the camps and self-consumption, and most often closed as soon as the camp did. [8]
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. In forestry, the term logging is sometimes used narrowly to describe the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest, usually a sawmill or a lumber yard. In common usage, however, the term may cover a range of forestry or silviculture activities.
Lumberjack is a mostly North American term for workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees. The term usually refers to loggers in the era before 1945 in the United States, when trees were felled using hand tools and dragged by oxen to rivers.
Rusk County is a county in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,188. Its county seat is Ladysmith. The Chippewa and Flambeau rivers and their tributaries flow through the county. The land ranges from corn/soybean farms and dairy farms to lakes rimmed with vacation homes to hiking trails through the Blue Hills.
Ojibwa is a town in Sawyer County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 267 at the 2000 census. The unincorporated community of Ojibwa is located in the town.
Log driving is a means of moving logs from a forest to sawmills and pulp mills downstream using the current of a river. It was the main transportation method of the early logging industry in Europe and North America.
The Chippewa River in Wisconsin flows approximately 183 miles (294 km) through west-central and northwestern Wisconsin. It was once navigable for approximately 50 miles (80 km) of its length, from the Mississippi River, by Durand, northeast to Eau Claire. Its catchment defines a portion of the northern boundary of the Driftless Area. The river is easily accessible for bikers and pleasure seekers via the Chippewa River State Trail, which follows the river from Eau Claire to Durand.
A steam donkey or donkey engine is a steam-powered winch once widely used in logging, mining, maritime, and other industrial applications.
The St. Croix Boom Site is a historic and scenic wayside on the St. Croix River in Stillwater Township, Minnesota, United States. It commemorates the location of a critical log boom where, from 1856 to 1914, timber from upriver was sorted and stored before being dispatched to sawmills downstream. The site was developed as a roadside park along Minnesota State Highway 95 in the 1930s. In 1966 it was designated a National Historic Landmark for its national significance in the theme of industry. It was nominated for being the earliest, most important, and longest serving of the log storage and handling operations that supported Minnesota's major logging industry. Virtually no traces remain of the site's original buildings and structures.
Neys Provincial Park is a natural environment-class provincial park on the north shore of Lake Superior, just west of Marathon, Ontario, Canada. This 5,383-hectare (13,300-acre) park includes the historic Coldwell Peninsula and the surrounding island system, consisting of Pic Island, Detention Island, and the Sullivan Islands.
Ax Men is an American reality television series that premiered on March 9, 2008 on History. The program follows the work of several logging crews in the second-growth forests of Northwestern Oregon, Washington and Montana and the rivers of Louisiana and Florida. The show highlights the dangers encountered by the loggers. Following in the footsteps of other shows from Original Productions, like Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers, the series is considered part of a recent "real-men-in-real-danger" television programming trend.
The St. Lawrence Boom and Manufacturing Company was a lumber company based in Ronceverte, West Virginia. It was founded in 1802 by a Colonel Cecil C. Clay, a former US Army Brigadier-General from Philadelphia.
Maxville is an unincorporated community and former company town in northern Wallowa County, Oregon, USA. The town was built in 1923 by the Bowman-Hicks Lumber Company, a large Southern firm with timber and mills in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Bowman-Hicks hired experienced loggers, regardless of race, from the Southern United States. In keeping with the Jim Crow practices common in the South at that time, Maxville had segregated neighborhoods, schools and baseball teams.
Porter's Mills, also called Porterville, was a logging boomtown in Eau Claire County, Wisconsin, United States, between Brunswick and Eau Claire, at 44° 46' 15" N 91° 34' 01" W. at an elevation of 771 feet.
Louis Seymour, known as "French Louie" or "Adirondack French Louie" was an Adirondack guide, trapper, woodsman and hermit. His age was unknown, but his death certificate said he was 84. He was born near Ottawa, Canada, sometime around 1832. French Louie is mentioned in virtually every book written about the south-central Adirondacks. A lot of what is known of him is from the oral tradition, but Harvey Dunham wrote a biography in 1953.
Shanagolden is an unincorporated community located in the town of Shanagolden, Ashland County, Wisconsin, United States. Shanagolden is located on the East Fork Chippewa River 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Butternut.
A gyppo or gypo logger is a logger who runs or works for a small-scale logging operation that is independent from an established sawmill or lumber company. The gyppo system is one of two main patterns of historical organization of logging labor in the Pacific Northwest United States, the other being the "company logger".
The Schroeder Lumber Company Bunkhouse is the last remaining structure of a logging camp in Schroeder, Minnesota, United States, on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The Schroeder Lumber Company from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, established a camp there in 1895, on the Cross River. The loggers had plenty of white pine, balsam fir, and spruce trees to cut. Loggers also dynamited the top 20 feet (6.1 m) of the Cross River waterfall to widen the river and built a series of dams to hold water in reserve. This enabled the loggers to move the logs down the river and into Lake Superior, where they were collected into a "holding boom" that kept the logs from floating away. The camp operated until 1905, when crews left to log the Apostle Islands.
Albert Lewis Johnson., better known as Jigger Johnson, was a legendary logging foreman, trapper, and fire warden for the U.S. Forest Service who was known throughout the American East for his many off-the-job exploits, such as catching bobcats alive barehanded, and drunken brawls.
A cookhouse is a small building where cooking takes place. Often found at remote work camps, they complemented the bunkhouse and were usually found on ranches that employed cowboys, or loggers in a logging camp. Prior to the 20th century, cookhouses were a feature of some private residences where the kitchen was a separate building so the heat and smoke from cooking was kept away from the main residential building.
The Madera Sugar Pine Company was a lumber company that operated in the Sierra Nevada region of California during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The company distinguished itself through the use of innovative technologies, including the southern Sierra's first log flume and logging railroad, along with the early adoption of the Steam Donkey engine. Its significant regional impact led to the establishment of towns such as Madera, Fish Camp, and Sugar Pine, as well as the growth of Fresno Flats and the formation of Madera County.
