What was the #1 challenge faced by early northwest miners and loggers? Logistics would get my vote - how to get coal and forest products to market. Both natural resources are bulky, heavy and generally located some distance from population centers. In the timber business, cedar posed special challenges. Stands of cedar are typically not very dense and instead more widely scattered. For denser stands of douglas fir, where the end product was used for structural components, it was far more practical to find/create a mill pond and locate a sawmill close to the trees. The Lake Sawyer Lumber Co. is a good example.
Photo courtesy Peggy Hawkins, Asahel Curtis photographer, circa 1925
Timber was harvested in the area surrounding the mill, transported to the lake on narrow gauge rail and stored in the lake until needed. The mill at first produced primary products such as large cants that were then transported to the Neukerchen's planing and finishing mill located in Issaquah. The mill was set up for processing douglas fir and isolated cedar trees were sometimes left uncut standing in the forest. For example, if you walk the trails at Lake Sawyer Park and Ravensdale Creek, you can often find big old growth cedar still standing while fir stumps with notches for loggers' springboards are located next to them.
During the late 1800's, Ballard in Seattle was the hub of manufacturing for cedar shingles. As previously reported, by 1900 there were more cedar shingles manufactured in Ballard and King County than anywhere else in the world. Small shingle mills were scattered around but the economics of shingle manufacturing apparently favored larger scale mills. As a result, we find more primary processing of cedar in the woods during this period than we do for fir.
The Wallace Wood Camp near Slaughter (Auburn) is a good example.
Photo courtesy Washington State Historical Society, 1938.44.1, W.S. Walbridge photographer, circa 1890
To make cedar shakes requires bucking a log into approximate 3' lengths. Note the hand saw and piles of sawdust. Once bucked, logs could then be further cut into bolts using an ax - ready for shingle mill processing. Transporting bolts was also a heck of lot easier than transporting big logs. A lot of hand work but one solution to finding sources of cedar located in remote locations with sparse density. Looks to be a pretty rough camp easily relocated.
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