The Logging Era

1. The Logging Era By Miss Jennifer Bosanic Northern Michigan University Student 2006

2. Sawmills: Cribs, Yards, & Office

3. Logging Camps • Were self-contained communities. Normally, the camps consisted of an office, company store (operated part time only with sales charged against pay due), bunk house, mess hall and kitchen, blacksmith shop and barn. The normal size for such camps was between 75 to 125 men, although larger camps were not uncommon. These camps usually lasted for between three to six years. When an area was logged out, the camps were simply abandoned or torn down and moved.

4. Important Port • With Manistique’s population at 5,400 in 1940. By then Manistique was already a major Upper Peninsula port, thanks to its location at the Manistique River mouth, important in logging river drives because of its extensive watershed. Manistique's ice-free Lake Michigan harbor was much closer to lumber markets than Lake Superior ports. In 1887, the new Soo Line railroad between Minneapolis and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, created a station in Manistique, and the town became an even more important shipping point. Local sawmills turned out Manistique's most lucrative product, white pine boards, at the rate of 90 million board feet a year. Commercial fishing was another major industry.

5. River Driving and Log Jams

6. River Driving • Huge volumes of logs were floated down the Manistique River in the 1890’s. • It was a massive floating fence would surround a free mass of floating logs covering from ten to twenty acres and resembling a large balloon. • Men would guide the logs down the river.

7. Log Jams • The logs would be held behind a small dam prior to being sent downstream to Lake Superior where they would be rafted or loaded onto a waiting ship. According to Hall, when a vessel was expected, the loggers would open a sluice at the head of the dam, permitting both water and logs to slide down to Lake Superior. The logs would then be worked into booms and rafted away.

8. World’s Fair Load Jobs could be found in the expanding timber industry where the rich white pine forests were quickly cut and then the hard woods were taken. In 1893 as a tribute to the logging industry, the World's Fair Load was sent to Chicago and viewed by visitors with astonishment.

9. Community Connection • Today Manistique Papers claims to be North America's largest recycler of catalogs, magazines, and junk mail, all de-inked, turned into pulp, and then once more made into paper that's used for ad inserts, food carryout bags, office papers, envelopes, and more. It recycles enough paper to keep some 2.4 million cubic yards out of landfills. The huge paper plant in Manistique is an important legacy of the area's forest products industry.

10. Resources • http://huntsupguide.com/manistique_detail.html • http://www.nps.gov/archive/piro/Logging03.pdf • Lumberjack: Inside an Era in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.