Prior to mechanized transportation, logging and winter were synonymous. The only way to move logs upwards of 5-6 miles was on ice and snow. In the white pine region, this made winter the ideal season to be logging in the forests. Large log sleds were pulled by a team of two horses, or oxen in some locations, over roads that had been iced and carefully groomed over time to support the heavy loads. They were taken most commonly to a banking grounds along a river to wait for the Spring thaw and the opening of the rivers to transport the logs to the sawmills.
In this episode, listeners will learn about the grooming of the roads and the uses of horses and sleds to move the logs, and how the "shantyboys" (the loggers' term for themselves) lived and worked in the forests during the coldest months of the year.
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Episode Sources:
Benson, Barbara E. "Logs and Lumber: The Development of Lumbering in Michigan's Lower Peninsula 1837-1870." Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI, 1989.
Ellis, Charles. "Among the Michigan Pines," "The Current." Chicago, Volume III, 1885.
Fitzmaurice, John W. "The Shanty Boy: Or Life in a Lumber Camp." Democrat Steam Print, Cheboygan, MI, 1889.
Heilala, John J. "In an Upper Michigan Lumber Camp." "Michigan History" Michigan Historical Commission, Lansing, MI, Vol. 36, No. 1, March 1952.
Holbrook, Stewart H. "Holy Old Mackinaw, A Natural History of the American Lumberjack." The MacMillan Company, New York, 1938.
Karamanski, Theodore J. "Deep Woods Frontier: A History of Logging in Northern Michigan." Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI, 1989.
Maybee, Rolland H. "Michigan's White Pine Era 1840-1900. Michigan Historical Commission, Lansing, MI, 1960.
Nelligan, John Emmett. "A White Pine Empire, the Life of a Lumberman." North Star Press, St. Cloud, MN, 1969 edition (originally published in 1929).
Sorden, L.G. "Lumberjack Lingo." Wisconsin House, Spring Green, WI, 1969.
Wells, Robert W. "Daylight in the Swamp!" Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1978.
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