I have been getting very interested in the local history of this area lately. As a result, I have found myself watching some strange choices of video on YouTube, and sitting in the library in the town perusing old newspaper cuttings. Unexpectedly, I have found the logging industry to be a fascinating topic. The short film 'Redwood Saga' from the 1940s was full of useful information. I had been wondering why some of the tree stumps round here had letterbox sized notches taken out of them. Now I know (because I have been so busy improving my mind) that the lumberjacks needed to insert planks into the sides of the tree, about six foot up, to stand on to start chopping - they didn't want the knobbly bit of trunk at the bottom. 'Grease monkeys' were the men who had to grease the log slides, and 'Bull thwachers' the men who goaded the animals along. There was a photo in the museum of about 12 oxen, yolked together in pairs, pulling a long chain of redwood trunks down an incline. The redwood trunks went back as far as the eye could see. The oxen had a type of stairway made with thinner logs as treads to stop their hooves slipping, but these had to be greased regularly to keep the logs moving across them.
Log flume was also something I thought only existed in theme parks (you can tell I really am a townie at heart). In the library I saw photographs of a real flume from the turn of the century, several miles long that the logs were shifted on. One enterprising millionaire had ridden this flume, which must have been extremely terrifying, given the height and the fact it looked only just wide enough to take a log (don't look doooooooooooooown).
Another YouTube film showed men in boats nudging logs in the river to keep them moving downstream. Like a lightbulb going on, I realised this is where 'log jam' comes from. If the men in their boats didn't do their stuff, the whole river backed up with what looked like tens of thousands of logs.
The sad side of all this is that the terrain looked awful after the trees had been felled. It reminded me of photographs of bombed landscapes just after the First World War. It is quite amazing that in the space of just over 100 years the new growth is as magnificent as it is.
Log flume was also something I thought only existed in theme parks (you can tell I really am a townie at heart). In the library I saw photographs of a real flume from the turn of the century, several miles long that the logs were shifted on. One enterprising millionaire had ridden this flume, which must have been extremely terrifying, given the height and the fact it looked only just wide enough to take a log (don't look doooooooooooooown).
Another YouTube film showed men in boats nudging logs in the river to keep them moving downstream. Like a lightbulb going on, I realised this is where 'log jam' comes from. If the men in their boats didn't do their stuff, the whole river backed up with what looked like tens of thousands of logs.
The sad side of all this is that the terrain looked awful after the trees had been felled. It reminded me of photographs of bombed landscapes just after the First World War. It is quite amazing that in the space of just over 100 years the new growth is as magnificent as it is.
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