Journey of the Log to Lumber

Journey of the Log to Lumber. It All Began in the Woods. , To supply the lumber mills with logs, entire mobile towns were created in the woods to house the men and their families who cut down the trees. The towns were movable camps conveyed by railroad cars. From 1916, these temporary towns, or logging camps, could be found in the woods surrounding Bend. They provided everything necessary for the families that lived there. Built on railroad hardware, the community buildings included a commissary, kitchen, company store, school and later on, a movie theater. It was said that the company's logging camps were the last word in sanitation, comfort and convenience. , The logs on the ground were hauled to the railroad. Horses with big wheels were used over the flat terrain to haul the 16 foot lengths, while steam yarders dragged the longer lengths over the rocky and steep areas. Each camp had their stable of stout work horses. The horses hauled the logs to the railroad cars where the logs were loaded by the steam powered McGiffert loader and transported to the mill. , Back in those days, the huge trees were cut or felled by hand. Two men, or tree fallers, would use a cross cut saw, called a misery whip, to cut the tree. Rogue branches, not surprisingly called widow makers, often flew from the trees as they fell. Once the tree was on the ground, they used axes to remove the limbs. The logs were sized into 16 or 32 foot lengths depending on whether they were hauled out of the area by horse or by steam yarder to begin their journey to the mill. , At one time, the Brooks-Scanlon Company had four of these camps cutting trees for their mill. Each camp housed over 100 residents and stayed in place two to three years, the length of time it took to log the timber in the vicinity. The mill was running three shifts a day around the clock while the men in the woods were falling about 500,000 board feet of timber per day. This pace kept them just a few days ahead of the mill's demand.