The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1883-08-22
A GREAT LUMBER REGION.
TIMBER CUTTING IN THE MILLS OF
THE SAGINAW VALLEY.
How n Big Saw Log IS Handied--The Gang
Saw and It's Swim tWOrlt--AIechanical De-
vices of the Industry.

How Big Saw Log is Handied--The Gang
Saw and It's Swim tWorls--AIechanical De-
vices ofthe Industry.
A long while before one reaches
Saginaw, Mich, says a New York
ECening Post correspondent, the signs
of the prevailing industry become APP
parent. The streams are clogged with
old slabs, Drowned and rotting logs,
and chaotic masses of wooden debris
from the size of a match up to the
huge sawn beam which in some an
cient flood has escaped its bonds In
the fields still remain the tree stumps
or piles of sawdust dozen feet high,
marking the old site of sawmill now
removed because the material that fed
it has been cut away. But all these
initial symptoms of the lumber region
are eclipsed and forgotten when the
Saginaw river is reached and with it
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 it.
self in vain to see beyond the lumber
horizon that stretches east and
west The yellow waters, perhaps
two hundred feet wide, pass
first between continuous booms, each
inclosing its army of giant logs. These
booms reach far above Saginaw, andif
we include tributaries of the river and
count both sides, make up a reach of
log posts seventy-five miles long. Next
to the logs and on the bank proper
rise, most impressive Of all, the tracts
of sawn lumber. Pileon pile they rise
on either side for sixteen miles up and
down the stream, covering acre after
acre until the wooden monotony be-
comes oppressive. Now and then the
wooden strand becomes thinner only to
rise again to more imposing height and
width around new cluster of mills.
These mills, often of grand proper
tions, spring from their lumber heaps
as giant CT fairy story looms amid
the Gisintegrated bones of his victims.
Their tall iron chimneys belch black
smoke, the 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 loading them, by
slow but steady toll, into barges whose
hulls rival the capacity of Cunarder.
Along this stretch OF sixteen miles
of the Saginaw river there are cut
annually billion feet of lumber, and
last year the figures went fifty millions
higher than that amount. Since to
most readers these figures are vague
immensity of numbers, let us try to
simplify them by an illustration. The
Saginaw mills 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 little
differently, would supply lumber
enough for fence four times around
the world, made of solid wooden posts,
with double row of boards, each six
inches wide.
Up the Saginaw in wild region,
reached either by the river or it's tribu-
taries, the great pine saw log, often
three feet in diameter, has its birth.
Pine forests, now rapidly thinning out
once covered several thousand square
miles around the headwaterS. Enter
ing that lumber region in the late
autumn, the lumbermen establish
camps, round which the whole winter
long the axes resound, the tai trunks
fall, and in sections are rolled to the
adjacent streams for the spring floods
to bear away. Floating down to the
main river the "boom men pick out
each others logs, as identified by the
brand, and gather them inside of the
booms, which may be curtly described
as long tree trunks chained together
at the ends, often inclOSing a smooth
water surface of several acres. The
coves of the Saginaw-called locally
"bayous," term borrowed from the
lower Mississippi are specially
adapted for the gathering and organi-
Zation of these log armies. The mill
tary metaphor, indeed, has peculiar
fitness here, for the logs are mustered
side by side in companies held together
| by a rope fastened TO each log by de-
vice not unlike the domestic clothespin.
| AS Jh6 loBS uOMu SIItdln dlo NolhCu
up by the tireleSs mills, these upper
booms are drawn upon for more, until
the freezing river finds them quite
empty, and another winter comes on to
| yield its fresh supply.
But the saw logs story becomes most
dramatic as it nears the mill ald,
loosed from the restraining rope, is
steered into the glade of open water
that leads up to the wooden slide
Enter now the great lumber mill, and
we shall be in at the saw logs death.
Down the slide on a wooden railroad
runs a heavy track. fittel with two
cross lines of heavy iron teeth. With
a plunge it dashes below the water,
still holding its place on the rails.
Then three giant logs are tloated above
] q Al q ainnnl the cI Innnn L. Lot ON