Tough Men of Timber

The tough men of timber: Black and white photos capture the arduous lives of 1800s lumberjacks who felled enormous trees using only hand tools and brute strength

• By Dailymail.com Reporter, www.dailymail.co.uk
• December 15th, 2015

Lumberjack style has recently come back in vogue, with city slickers and suburbanites donning the flannel shirts of the profession as a way to look rugged.

However, a series of photos reveal the grueling work that loggers put in during the 1800s and beginning of the 20th century, toiling through hard lives away from their families while living in camps with their coworkers.

Conservation efforts would eventually put a stop to the felling of magnificent redwood trees in places such as northern California, but logging became a huge industry across many parts of the nation as companies looked to supply wood for new housing in growing urban centers..

Lumberjacks, many of whom came from farms before heading to the woods to make money logging, took pride in the trees they cut and posed for pictures on massive stumps using the growing technology of photography.

While the work was dangerous, the woodworkers also developed sports such as logrolling that are still practiced by outdoorsmen in competitions today.

Though the job of lumberjacks has since largely been mechanized, below are photos of lumberjacks from the turn of the last century as they looked to make their mark on America using only hand tools.

Taking pictures on the stumps of trees recently cut down became a tradition for lumberjacks of the 1800s and early 1900s

Above, five loggers sit on the stump of a tree that they fell in Deming, Washington in 1925 as the scattered limbs of other trees lie around

The logging industry accelerated quickly in the 1800s as more wood was needed for settlers expansion westward towards California and the Pacific Northwest

The sheer amount of trees cut around the turn of the 20th century was staggering. Above, a logger almost blends in with the cut trees

Logging has largely become mechanized now, thanks to technological advancements in the 20th century. Above, loggers in Minnesota in 1937 look for a strong log to build a loading boom

In the early 20th century, loggers used hand tools such as two-men saws (Top)  to carve into trees that dwarfed them in size

Loggers had to use teamwork to move that large pillars of wood. Above, a group in the 1930s moves a log into a river in West Virginia

Lumberjacks developed a reputation for being the manliest of men because of the danger of their work and the strength required to do it

The lumberjacks would often leave their families and live in camps where hundreds of their fellow workers relaxed between grueling shifts

Above, loggers in 1892 standing in the trunk of a tree they chopped down at Camp Badger in Tulare County, California. The tree went to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago the next year

Above, loggers sit on chunks of trees that they chopped down while looking around at the remaining forest surrounding them

Above, three loggers in 1900 stand next to a large fir log which has been cut using a sawing machine in Sedro-Woolley, Washington 

The loggers would used the system of American rivers to ship the massive quantities of wood to sawmills where it would be turned to lumber

The lumberjacks had to worry about log jams stopping the flow of the product downriver. Above, loggers in Idaho clear a jam in the 1930s

Above, several log rollers in the 1930s break up a log jam on the Little Fork River during the last log drive on that river in Koochiching County, Minnesota

The primitive methods of felling and moving trees developed in the 1800s (top) would eventually be changed by technology including trucks (bottom)

Conservation would eventually stop lumberjacks from downing some of the nation's more majestic trees, such as this Giant Sequoia undercut in 1902

Above, a team of horses pulls a sled filled up with red and white pine logs in Red Lake County, Minnesota, at the beginning of the 20th century

Horses were often the hardest workers on many of the logging camps, pulling trees such as these ones seen on a carrying vessel in 1890

Logging took place all over the country, including in the South in spots such as Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. Above, the parish in 1904

Above, a crew stands among cut old growth longleaf pine near the settlement of Neame, now called Anacoco, in Vernon Parish, Louisiana

Above, loggers in Michigan load a series of white pine logs onto a train to be carried to a sawmill 

Above, a crew in 1900 Washington state poses next to a donkey engine used for yarding logs, or gathering logs together after they are cut

Above, a logger unloads a cypress log at Watertown, Osceola National Forest, Florida, in 1937

 
Above, JW Edwards of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, poses with his ax in 1942. He was a life-long timber cutter