MAY CONTAIN NUTS
HOME
Home

Search Shorpy

SEARCH TIP: Click the tags above a photo to find more of same:
Mandatory field.

Search results -- 30 results per page

I'm a Lumberjack: 1899
Upper Michigan circa 1899. "The loggers." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. ... [Batteries and apostrophes sold separately. - Dave] Loggers? All those guys on a log and not an axe or saw in sight: just poles ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/02/2012 - 9:53pm -

Upper Michigan circa 1899. "The loggers." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size. "Bless Yore Beautiful Hide" said Johnny MercerLooks like six siblings about to break out in song and dance in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." Naturally, Howard Keel was taking the photo. Ground cover.Is it snow or sawdust?? [Snow. - Dave] Pass At Your Own RiskI have a funny feeling nobody would have messed around with this crew. Pipe dreamWhich one of these doesn't belong? That's right, the one on the left! (the one in the middle has a pipe stem poking out from his shirt). New from Blammo!What rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs, rolls over your neighbors dog, it fits on your back, its great for a snack? LOG LOG LOG! Its Log, its Log, its big its heavy its wood! Its Log, it's Log, its better than bad, its good! ("Ren & Stimpy") [Batteries and apostrophes sold separately. - Dave] Loggers?All those guys on a log and not an axe or saw in sight: just poles used to roll the logs. They are lumberjacks and they're okayThey sleep all night, and they work all day. Do I hear a banjo?You sure got a purty mouth boy! Our Daily BreadLooks like a tough way to earn a living. PrideSomehow I think that they were very good at what they did, and proud OF it. Monty PythonEat your heart out!! SwoonNow them's some MEN. Family TreeI wonder if any of the men in that photo are related to me. My mom's family are all Yoopers, and they did own a logging camp at the time of that photo. Wait'll J. Peterman gets a load of this“Outfitted in the season’s latest North Country Leisurewear, a trio of our robust quintet sports colorful suspenders crafted of fine Malaysian batting, fastened with just-so-perfect tiny bone buttons to colorful sports trousers of hearty wools from the Scottish Highlands. From the left: Lance cuts a fancy figure in his Lipstick Red placketed shirt and Mourning Dove Gray slacks, accented with broad pin-striped suspenders in burgundy and pink. Next up is Ian, grasping that looong hardwood pike and pausing for a pipeful of our exclusive J-Puff tobacco (see Accessories, page 32), in a scoop-neck Heather Green mariner’s sweater. He’s chosen braces (our dear British friends love that word) in a solid tan hue with just a hint of mahogany to hold up his Seafoam Green action slacks, designed for real outdoor adventures. In the center, all snuggly warm in a Periwinkle Blue anorak…” (The Gallery, DPC, Mining)
A Big Load: 1890s
Michigan circa 1890s. "Logging a big load." Continuing our Michigan travelog. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing ... quad and trailer I have nothing but respect for those loggers of the past. THEY had it tough! Lumber sealer A lumber sealer ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/29/2012 - 10:08am -

Michigan circa 1890s. "Logging a big load." Continuing our Michigan travelog. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size. IncredibleThis picture blows my mind. On the one hand, my first inclination is to call it a gag photo. But there it is -- before the days of Photoshop. On the other hand I am left to wonder: How can two horses pull such an enormous load -- on sled runners no less, in snow-covered dirt? All the lumberjacks present suggest we are at the forest, not the mill. How long is the horse-pull to the mill? How were the logs piled so high? I take it there was a steam derrick somewhere abouts. etc. etc. People want to know, Dave. Can't resistThose lumberjacks sure have a lot of wood. Hardly toothpicksHope that load didn't become firewood. Can't tell the species from the bark, but that's marvelous timber -- straight, free of limbs (and, thereby, knots and/or crotch wood) -- and some of the logs must be approaching 3 feet across. I see lots of furniture there. I'm SpeechlessThese guys are nuts! 2 HPI'm surprised that kind of load can be pulled by only two horses. Hope they don't have to pull it uphill. PuzzledHow the heck did they stack those logs that high? How the heck do just two horses pull that load? Regardless, pretty darned impressive. Special ShoesThe horses were generally shod with special "clawed" shoes--sort of studded tires of the day. This gave them extra grip in the ice and snow. Also, it would be easier to drag this over the ice (once it was moving)than over dirt roads. I am a native Oregonian and remember seeing trees like this going through the small towns of my childhood on the back log log trucks. Maybe the Run is Downhill?But surely even these brawny experts didn't saw the logs so neatly by hand, so there must be a steam-driven saw and crane nearby. [The trees were felled and sectioned by hand. - Dave] Double DutyFrom the photo below it appears that the horses not only had to pull the sled, but they had to help load it too. It's a livingAren't you glad you're not a horse? Timber SledsHere are a couple photos I used in our project about Michigan White Pine Lumbering in the mid 1800's. Logging in Upper MichiganThe sleds were pulled on ice roads made by spraying the trails with water. The drivers had to be especially careful going down a grade as the load could overrun the horses. If they had an uphill grade they would add a couple helper horses. Another problem was crossing lakes, if the sled fell through the ice it could pull the horses in. These sleds were a big reason why logging was done in the winter in upper Michigan. "Life in a Logging Camp"There's an interesting illustrated account of white pine logging in Michigan in the June 1893 issue of Scribner's magazine. It describes a load of logs "18 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 33 feet 3 inches from the top to the roadbed, weighing over 100 tons ... hauled by a single team" over the specially prepared ice covered roads, and says it "will be placed on the grounds of the Columbian Exposition as one of the wonders of the world." A book on the era The book "White Pine Days on the Tahquamenon" is a good read on the Michigan logging days. WowCan you imagine what the forests looked like with all the trees that size? Pulling PowerTwo impressive draft horses there. Lumber SealerMy great-grandfather, Albert Schuitema, was a lumber sealer in the early 1900's. Maybe he worked in the vicinity of these pictures. Can anyone tell me what a lumber sealer did? Down to the RiverThe horses did not pull the sled to the mill. Trees were cut in the winter only and the horses pulled the sled on a pre-iced trail to a river. The logs were put into the river in the spring and floated to a sawmill. The lumberjacks made a water corral out of some of the logs by chaining them together end to end. The bulk of the logs were put inside the corral. Steam tugboats pulled the log corrals out into the great lakes and to the sawmills on the main inland rivers. The Tugboats waited in an area where the logs would appear just like a taxi waits for a rider. This was a seasonal business for the lumberjacks. Winter and spring only. The Forest TodayThere is still a large piece of virgin forest left in Michigan's U.P., it is called the Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park. The park sits along the shore of Lake Superior and is about 70,000 acres. This forest holds the largest stand of unharvested old growth forest east of the Mississippi River. Hike into the interior trails and experience "what it was like" before the upper Midwest was logged. The white pine and hemlock trees are huge, the air is cool and pure, and the silence of the forest is deafening! Total respectAfter a week of felling and logging up 16 large oaks with the help of two Sthil chainsaws and a powerful quad and trailer I have nothing but respect for those loggers of the past. THEY had it tough! Lumber sealerA lumber sealer was the fellow who would mark the ends of the lumber with the "seal" of the company who was doing the logging. Remember, this was when logs were driven to the mill down river, the same river that every other logging company used. Marking or "sealing" was a way of identifying your logs from those of other companies at the mill, it's simular to branding cattle. Shorpy U Rides Again!Once again, I learn more here than I did from living a few years in WA (logging territory) or from even more years in college! Love the bit about the sealer... Thanks, guys and gals! 1893 World's Fair LoadThis load of white pine was cut on the Nestor Estate near Ewen, Michigan, in Ontonagon County in the Upper Peninsula. It was a world's record load of more than 36,000 board-feet of lumber. The two horses did indeed pull the load approximately a quarter of a mile. It was then loaded onto railcars, along with the sled, and sent to Chicago. The load was reloaded as part of the Michigan Lumber exhibit at the 1893 Columbia Exposition. -- Hartwick Pines Logging Museum Very coolI own my family hunting land and it is located in the northern section of the lower peninsula of Michigan. I think this photo is amazing! All Michigan antique photos mean something to me because my family first settled in MI in 1883 (from Oklahoma on horse carriage) (The Gallery, DPC, Horses, Mining)
All a Board: 1899
... woods of the Northeastern US were depleted in the 1880's, loggers turned their attention to NE Minnesota, the northern half of Wisconsin, and Michigan's UP. River junction towns like Minneapolis, Stillwater, and Winona ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 05/09/2016 - 5:12pm -

Minnesota circa 1899. "Winona, a sawmill plant." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size. Warning!Customers are enjoined not to remove boards from the bottom of the stack. Please summon a sales associate for assistance. Not Near the WoodIs that some sort of burning beacon at left? A common industry back thenWhen the woods of the Northeastern US were depleted in the 1880's, loggers turned their attention to NE Minnesota, the northern half of Wisconsin, and Michigan's UP. River junction towns like Minneapolis, Stillwater, and Winona became sawmill towns as White Pine logs were brought down the rivers for milling. This was some of the finest lumber ever cut, and in 1899 the supply still seemed endless. As the loggers moved north, so did the sawmills, especially once steam replaced water for power. Duluth, Ashland, and Virginia MN became sawmill towns. The trees weren't endless. Using the primitive tools of the day loggers managed to all but clean out the White Pine in the northern halves of three states by the early 1920's. Attempts to replant the White Pine using seedlings from Europe were met with failure. These new trees brought White Pine Blister Rust with them and pretty much sealed the fate of the species here. There were also massive forest fires after logging. All of the slash (branches and tops) were left loose on the ground and once dry, burned like gasoline. Only a few small stands and scattered individual White Pine trees remain today, replaced primarily by Aspen, the first growth after logging in these parts. Most of the older homes in the Midwest were built with lumber from these stands, including almost all of the farm houses in the Great Plains that replaced the old sod huts. As the logs ran out the families that owned timber and logged, like the Weyerhausers and Boeings (yes, that Boeing, and that's a story in itself), moved to either the Pacific Northwest or to the southern states to continue the family businesses. We still occasionally see a huge White Pine stump, a deadhead log poking up out of a lake, or a logging railroad grade from the logging days in the woods here. (The Gallery, DPC, Industry & Public Works, Railroads)
Syndicate content  Shorpy.com is a vintage photography site featuring thousands of high-definition images. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago. Contact us | Privacy policy | Accessibility Statement | Site © 2024 Shorpy Inc.