Controlling A River Of Logs

Controlling A River Of Logs. . From 1856 to 1914, the St. Croix Boom was the logging industry center on the St. Croix River–the place where logs cut from northern forests entered the marketplace. , Each spring, loggers harnessed the river's powerful current to float their winter cut downstream. That log drive ended at the Boom Site, where logs entered a complex series of channels and holding pens that extended for miles. Workers sorted logs to determine ownership and measured board feet. Owners then arranged for timber to be milled locally or transported farther downstream., When the Boom Site closed on June 12, 1914, over 13 billion board feet had passed through. Imagine over 2 million railroad cars stretched across the United States six times! This lumber (transformed into houses, barns, fence posts, doors, and other building materials) made settlement of the treeless Great Plains possible., Sorting Logs , Hundreds of companies used the St. Croix River to float logs downstream each year. Once in the water, there was no way to prevent one company's logs from mixing with another's. To resolve issues of ownership, each logging camp registered unique bark and log marks and hammered these into logs–a process similar to branding cattle. There were over 2,000 unique marks in the 58 years of the Boom Site's operation., Caption: , Natural channels and high cliffs made the Boom Site perfect for sorting.