Camps hired the very best cooks they could find. Good food brought good men into a camp. Dining etiquette was strictly enforced. Breakfast at the dining hall in the morning, lunch served in the woods at noon, and a hot meal in the dining hall again in the evening. The men amused themselves with games and stories in the bunkhouse at night, hung their soaked clothes near the stove to dry, and turned in early.
Morning comes very early in a pinery camp.
In addition to our Festival of Adventures fur trade rendezvous, we also offer an 1890s pinery camp experience. In the era that followed the statewide Jack Pine harvest, White Oak became an important replacement to Jack Pine. During the pinery camp era, White Oak was cut as a hardwood. White Oak was used in the making of furniture and for cooperage. As the river pigs floated the White Oak logs to the mill, deer would gather along the river to drink.