Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1883-07-28
THE STORY OF TIE sAw-Loc.
Timbe r. -Cutting & In gan for the Great
Mills on the Saginaw---A Protected In
dustrY Exhausring Itself.

Timbe Cutting In gan for the Great
Mills on the Saginaw---A Protected In
dustry Exhausting Itself.
Cor New York Evening Post
A long while before ore reaches Sag
inaw the signs of the prevailing indus
try become apparent. The streams are
clogged with old slabs, Drowned and
rotting logs. and chaotic masses of
wooden debris from the size of q match
up to the huge sawn beam which in
some ancient flood has escaped its
bonds. In the fields still remain the
tree stumps or piles of sawdust a dozen
feet high, making the Old site of saw
mill now removed because the material
that fed il has been cut away. But all
these initial symptoms of the lumber
region are eclipscd and forgotten when
the Saginaw river is reached and with
ii the busy center of the industry. For
sixteen miles down to Bay City, near
Lake Huron, the stream flows between
wooden strands. The eye strains itself
in vain to see beyond the lumber hort
zon that stretches east and west The
yellow waters, perhaps two hundred
feet wide, pass first between continuous
booms, each inclosing its army of giant
iOHS. IutSb DOOHls ItuCH ldI uDONt
Saginaw, and, if we include tributaries
of the rivers and count both sides,
make up n reach Of log posts seventy
five miles long. Next to the logs and
on the bank proper rise most impress
sive of all, the tracts of sawn lumber
Pile on pile they rise on either side for
sixteen miles up and down the stream,
covering acre after acre till the wooden
monotosJ becomes oppressive. Now
and then the wooden strand becomes
thinner only to rise again to more i'm
posing height and width around new
cluster of mills. These mills, often of
grand proportions, spring from their
lumber heaps as a giant or fairy story
looms amid the disintegrated bones of
his victims. Their tall iron chimneys
belch black smoke, their rafting saws
cut the air with their distant rasp, and
the sense of industrial activeness is
filled out by the hives of workmen
swarming over the lumber hills and
loadin them by slow but steady toll,
into barges whose hulls rival the capac-
ity of a Cunarder.
Along this stretch of sixteen miles OF
the Saginaw river there are cut annual
ly a billion feet of lumber. and last year
the figures went fifty millions higher
than that amount. Since to most read.
ers these figures are avague immensity
of numbers, let us try to simplify them
by an illustration a foot of lumber
the unit of board measure, means a
board one foot square and one inch
thick so that, for example, n plank
two inches thick, one foot wide, and
ten feet long, would contain twenty
lumber feet. Now apply the measure
to the figures of the annual Saginaw
lumber product as cited above. We
shall find that the Saginaw nills
turn out each year so much lumber,
large and small, that if it were all cut
in inch-thick boards, each of them one
foot wide, and then these boards were
placed end to end, they would reach
about 100000 miles, or four times
around our planet. The product, to
put the illustration a little differently
would supply lumber enough for fence
four times around the world, made OF
solid wooden posts and with double
row of boards each six inches wide