page_title: 1886 St. Croix River log jam
section_title: Causes and start of the 1886 log jam
hierarchical_section_title: 1886 St. Croix River log jam / Causes and start of the 1886 log jam
caption_attribution_description: English: Dalles of the St. Croix River in Interstate State Park, Minnesota — from the Wisconsin bank. Part of the NPS Ice Age National Scientific Reserve.
context_page_description: In 1886, a log jam developed in the St. Croix River, close to Taylors Falls, Minnesota, and St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. It was described at the time by a local journalist as "the jammedest jam" he had encountered, and was very difficult to clear, with hundreds of men working for six weeks to clear it, eventually using steamboats and dynamite. The jam was also a major tourist attraction, with thousands of spectators every day.
context_section_description: In the area now covered by Interstate State Park, the St. Croix River runs through a narrow gorge, the Dalles of the St. Croix, and makes a 90 degree turn at Angle Rock. The spring of 1886 was very dry, so the water level was too low to transport logs. This began to change when the Clam River dam was blown up by the hermit Robert Davidson, who claimed the dam interfered with his meadow lands. Davidson was later charged for blowing up the dam and jailed for contempt of court. The release of the Clam River water caused the St. Croix to rise slightly. Sluice dams on several other tributaries, including Kettle River and Snake River, were opened as well, and coincidentally, heavy rain storms caused the rivers to rise further. Large numbers of logs were dumped into the river all at once, more than the river or the driving crews working along could deal with. Shortly after midnight on June 13, 1886, while the driving crews were asleep in their tents, the logs were caught at Angle Rock and quickly started to pile up. More and more logs ran onto the jam, including the 15 million feet of the Clam River drive.
  The Stillwater Messenger reprinted a report from the Taylor's Falls Journal about the start of the jam:
  Last week the lumbermen wore a dejected and lost-their-last-friend look, for the water in the rivers was steadily falling and their logs were almost inextricably jammed at Wood river, Kettle river rapids, the mouth of the Namagon and other places. Crews had been discharged, and there seemed little prospect of getting the logs to market for an indefinite time. But it remained for Davidson, the hermit, to strike the key-note for a change to all this, by blowing out the Clam river dam with dynamite. The water from that stream caused a slight rise, and by one of Elias McKean's "most remarkable coincidences", there seemed to be a concert of action by the elements and otherwise. Other dams were opened, heavy rain storms flooded the upper country, and there was immediately a boom in the water of the Saint Croix, and logs went booming along toward the great Stillwater boom. Logs from the "low-water" drives were easily floated off, and came down stream in immense rafts, almost blockading the river as they moved along. Reaching the famous dells of the Saint Croix, their course was interrupted. The channel was too narrow and the current too sluggish to allow their passage in such large bodies, and shortly after midnight, Sunday morning, they "hung-up" and began jamming and piling. Something such a catastrophe has been anticipated, and yet it came unexpectedly, for the men who had been here for weeks, building sheerbooms at the eddies in the dells, and keeping watch to prevent a jam, were asleep in their tents, and their booms were broken, and the formation of the biggest jam ever known commenced before they were aware of it.
  — Stillwater Messenger
   
  An estimated 125 to 150 million board feet of pine became stuck in the log jam. For comparison, the average annual production of pine in the St. Croix valley between 1870 and 1889 was 241 million board feet.
caption: Dalles of the St. Croix with the bend at Angle Rock
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