Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1911-07-31
A TYPICAL
LOGGING CAMP
Herald Representative Visits
Logging Camp Of A. F.
Coats Company.
MODERN LOGGING WORK
Require Engineering Skill---
Steam Has Replaced
Cattle in Woods

Despite The fact that Grays Harbor
is the greatest lumber manufacturing
port in the world; and in spite of the
fact that the prosperity of Aberdeen
and Of the other Harbor cities is tied
up in the welfare of the lumber mills
there are hundreds of people who
know of logging and booming and
milling only as a phrase. Old timers,
of course, who have seen the trees
cut on the hills where the residences
now stand, and have seen the mills
spring up along the river, are familiar
with all the details of the great lumb-
er industry. But those who have i'm
migrated later, who are engaged in
business or in the professions or in
housekeeping are wholly unfamiliar
with the methods either in mill or in
camp. From them the description of
a typical logging camp may prove
instructive. And for those too who
have tramped the woods, who have
watched men conquer the trees, there
is always something Of interest in the
picture of the battle with the woods.
With the aim both at learning and
describing Herald representative
visited the camps OF the A. F. Coats
Logging company one day last week;
and by the courtesy of some of the
men of the company was given an in
sight into the work and life of their
camps in the woods along the Wish
kah river.
The timber industry has been great
~ changed since the days when men
cleared their little farms back in New
England and turned the logs into
rough lumber at some little one-saw
mill. While the axe and the saw still
remain the basic tools of logging,
steam and cable and railways and
telephones and modern engineering
have supplemented the hand tools of
the former age. Science is now con-
mess too is not so much individual as
cooperative. Logging is conducted
on so large scale, the capital invest
ed is SO great, the cost of keeping up
the camps is so large, that the indust-
ry is the business of the corporation
rather than the single person.
NJ 10 ttxr If
it's own. OF necessity it is removed
somewhat from the main current of
traffic, though in present day logging
the connection between camp and
world is far more intimate than be.
fore. It's singularity is not so much
from isolation as from self-sufficiency
The logging camp has it's own line of
railway. One terminal is the river
landing. while inland the road sprays
out into many branches that end at
the frontier of the woods. The var
ious camps are the Gowns" along it's
route. The interests of the camps
are special, are confined to the var
ious efforts in logging and to the news
from other camps. The commissariat
is complete mercantile store and the
pantry of the cook shack resembles
a Wholesale grocery.
Leaving on the morning train
from the river we climbed the ridges,
through the country already logged,
to the line of the camps about three
miles inland. The logging railroad is
not makeshift affair; but shows
genuine engineering skill. The prob
lens to be solved are perplexing for
the ridges are steep and the canyons
deep. Frequently the grade was five
per cent, and in one place there was
a seven per cent. incline, making the
engine with its string of empty trucks
puff like the locomotive of an over.
land One spot showed peculiar diff.
ficulties. There was a curve, partly
of "a degrees and the rest of 80, along
a four per cent grade, through a 80
foot cut, with a short reverse curve
at the end. Cuts and fills are fire.
quent, the biggest cut being SO feet
and the deepest fill about 25 feet.
There are four camps out in the
woods, each complete within itself.
A camp consists of a cook shack and
eating house. several bunk-houses
machine shops, and supply houses.
The buildings are small so they can