Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire A Video of Logging "Back in the Day" in the Pacific Northwest

When my dad moved out to Oregon from North Dakota about 1950, one of jobs he got was logging in the Tillamook Forest for a while. Some of the stories he told about logging the Tillamook Burn area were pretty hair raising... Occasionally I will come across some of those big stumps in the Coast range from the old growth that was cut down about that time and they are huge and still solid as a rock.

I have been on a crew setting up spar trees, notching stumps for guy lines, splicing wire guylines. in the mid 60s.

Norm

Thanks for the rabbit hole for the last 4 hours... amazing\

In the early '60's, I had an aunt and uncle that lived somewhere in Oregon. We were visiting and Uncle Mike took Dad and I for a ride thru the mountains one day. We saw a flume with logs coming down and some river with logs floating in it. We didn't see where the logs went into the river and didn't see the sawmill. Wish we could have.

Some TOUGH men... I cannot imagine the cottonmouths those guys saw.

Even today, there is some big timber in Oregon. In the interior, we just never saw trees like that. GD

Good God, men were men back then. Standing on that 2x6 and chopping down a six foot diameter tree with an axe.

Cool stuff, thanks for sharing.

Giant balls they had , todays loggers too .

It's still no picnic, when my son sold out his little outfit in 2016, his workers comp insurance rate was 90%. In other words, as an employer if he paid an employee a 1000 bucks, he had to pay in another 900 bucks to the insurance. And that was with a 4 year accident free record. I think even though logging is more machines than manpower now...the reason it is still the most dangerous occupation (according to Dept of Labor Statistics) they are logging ground that is crazy steep. They have developed 'tether systems' where a grapple machine ('shovel logging') is literally held on a slope by cable suspension. A new definition of a 'tight ass'.

Same
LOL

Those old videos are way cool! Probably banned in schools these days as they are the precursor to those vile Spotted Owl killers!

lotsa choo choo trainage in the first one, wabitard would nut himself

toot toot

We are currently watching two fallers work on 160 acres across the creek. It is too steep for the tether system. I know what if feels like to get a little "tippy" on my excavator, I can just imagine what it feels like on some of those tether machines, on steeper terrain. The operator has to have a good feel for load at full extension.

The BLM land to our north (80 acres) has never been logged. It is a very interesting forest. Lots of 70-80 year old large stumps on our property.

I knew an Indian kid in college who'd taken a year off of school to work for a logging company. He lost all 8 fingers at the 1st joint working the green chain. Back to school.

Logger, You are probably in the Rogue or Umpqua drainage? No shortage of upendicular ground. We will probably bump elbows at the Douglas Co fairgrounds on the 18th.
Unless it's snowing on the Siskiyous.

One of the reasons I would never mess with a logger... those guys are some tough and well conditioned SOBs... my brother in law was a logger until he got trapped under a falling tree once too often and had to retire. But he was about 5'8" and about 160 lbs dripping wet and he would carry a chainsaw, a couple containers of gas, a half dozen extra chains, wedges, a single jack hammer, all his PPE, and a lunch it would take three regular guys to eat and he would go up and down hills most of us would need climbing gear to traverse. And he did it every day , all day for many years. The hills around here where loggers inhabit are nothing to sneeze at for sure and you can drive around any day of the week and see hillsides like that all clearcut where somebody had to go up and down there, cutting, setting chokers, limbing, bucking, and generally working their asses off while trying not to get killed by falling trees, rolling trees, rocks , logging trucks in a hurry to load up and get moving to the mill, etc....

I hated watching that stupid show "Axemen" because it made most of the guys look like complete morons.. most of the loggers I've known over the years were nothing like the idiots portrayed on that show...

Good stuff,
logging = learn a new way to get hurt everyday.
It takes skill and savvy to do that work.

I'll be those fellows swinging axes and using cross cut saws slept well at night.