The enormous size of timber in the pacific northwest posed both great opportunity and big problems. The reward - high quality lumber and tremendous yields once you got logs to the sawmill. The challenge - how to get logs from the woods to the sawmill. Once timber supplies were depleted along the shores of Puget Sound and tributary river basins, moving such enormous mass tested the ingenuity of early loggers. But not to worry. Where mechanical solutions were yet to be invented, the answer was brute force - and a 6,000 calorie per day diet.
Photo courtesy Tacoma Library, 27054.jpg, William Jackson photographer, circa 1888
W.F. McKay based in Tacoma was apparently advanced enough to have established railroad access to their logging operations in 1888, but as we can see, that was not enough. I have no idea how they were able to load these short logs onto railcars, let alone long logs. This meant bucking logs to length using hand saws before they could be loaded and shipped. These logs look to be about 10 footers, requiring 9 or more cuts for a 100 foot log and typically one, or a max of two, log cuts per day. 5 to 10 days of work for a two man bucking crew. No steam power, just calories.
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