Re: So,- Your Into Logging!
Casey Feedwater said this:
"One of the things that makes Ozarks logging attractive to me (other than the fact that I live in what used to be the Osage River basin - now it's a huge lake) is that it's quite a bit different from logging in the Pacific Northwest or Michigan or .... It gives me an opportunity to do something that is different from what many other logging modelers do."
I enjoyed your website, all of it, even the op-ed pages! But, I think that if you reviewed the logging textbooks, you would see with minor exceptions, there is more common to all logging within a specific time period than differences.
Differences occur when the "bottom," or climate are different from region to region. A case in point is the steal tower skidder used in your neck of the woods and the northwest. Common logging technology used in both regions. This logging between two different logging regions with different sized logs and different species has the same technology.
In hardwood or softwood logging, wheel logging with either horses or mules took place in your region, they may have called them "High" wheels or "Big" wheels but it happened. It also happened in the upper mid-west, south, northwest, southwest and the northeast during the same period.
A river drive for logs that will become ties or lumber is the same thing, if it is the Great Northern Lumber Company in Leavenworth, Washington, or your outfit in the Ozarks, both outfits drove logs down a river and then loaded them on railroads to finish the trip to the mill.
Perhaps, the biggest difference between, west, mid-west, south, and northeast was the proportion of large, middle, and small sized loggers.
As late as the early 1920s, the Western Pacific railroad was contracting for hand hewed oak ties because it was cheaper than either, redwood, creosoted Douglas fir or pine ties.
Jimmy “B”
ops:
