With permission from Larry B. Massie
The following are excerpts from "Voyages into Michigan's Past"
If you would like your own personal copy of Larry B. Massie's "Voyages into Michigan's Past", please contact him
at:
Larry B. Massie
2109 41st St.
Allegan, MI 49010-8906
WHEN PINE WAS KING
The white pine had sprouted from a pine cone in the days of the Pilgrims. Six feet through at the base, it rose straight as an arrow, 100 feet tall. Its craggy branches stirred as a shiver ran through its trunk.
Far below its crown, antlike figures pulled a gleaming crosscut saw back and forth. Little streams of sawdust mounded up on each side. One of the men paused to
pound wedges tighter into the gash cut by the saw, then returned to his rhythmic labor. With a sudden cry of "timber-r-r-r" one sawyer pulled his handle off the saw, the other yanked the blade through the cut and both ran for safety. Th e forest giant slowly began to topple, increasing in velocity until, with a crackling roar, it bounced on a pillow of snow.
Green gold they called the vast stands of white, red, and jack pine that blanketed Michigan's peninsulas north of the southern three tiers of counties. Woodworkers and builders preferred white pine, soft, easily shaped and durable. By the 1840s, as the last stand of white pine vanished before woodsmen's axes in Maine, the timber frontier shifted to Michigan.
During the period from 1860 to 1900 pine was king in Michigan and the harvesting, sawing and marketing of lumber dominated the state's economy. Some 160 billion board feet of Michigan timber flowed to eastern manufacturers, and to w estern prairie farmers, and it built Chicago twice. In 1890, the peak year, Michigan cut some 4 1/4billion board feet of lumber.
Timber barons like Charles Hackley of Muskegon, Louis Sands of Manistee, and Perry Hannah of Traverse City made fortunes out of pine. Others mixed pine with politics to parley their success in lumbering into political careers. Michi gan Governors Crapo, Alger, Jerome and
Bliss started as lumbermen as did U.S. Senators Francis B. Stockbridge of Kalamazoo and Thomas W. Ferry of Grand Haven.
The big operators and thousands of less-successful entrepreneurs ruthlessly attacked the state's seemingly inexhaustible timber resources. They denuded virgin forests bought at $1.25 an acre or less into barren stretches of blow sand. R ailroad companies received millions of acres of prime woods as a reward for extending their lines northward. Another infamous tactic was to "log a round forty" by buying forty acres in the middle of a stand and cutting the timber in all directions as far as could be seen. Reforestation or conservation of uncut trees was unheard of. Entire townships of cutover areas containing nothing but stumps and tinder-dry tops brought frequent forest fires. In 1871 and 1881 millions of acres of prime forests went up i n flames.
Large-scale exploitation of Michigan's pine lands began when lumbermen in New England and New York learned of the enormous stands of white pine in the Saginaw River Basin. There, grew more than three million acres of the finest quality white pine, called cork pine because it floated high in the water like a cork. The Saginaw River Basin -also contained 864 miles of rivers and streams suitable for floating logs to the saw mills. During the peak years of the 1880s, 110 sawmills lay along the Saginaw River from Saginaw through Bay City and on to Essexville. By 1897, when the timber ran out, almost 23 billion board feet of Saginaw lumber had been shipped by schooner or train to eastern markets.
On the western side of the lower peninsula, the Grand, Pere Marquette, Manistee, Betsie and Boardmen became famous lumber rivers. Major operations that rivaled the Saginaw Basin took place on the Muskegon River. As early as 1837, August us Penoyer sent a raft of lumber from his sawmill at Penoyer Creek down the Muskegon to Chicago. By the 1880s, 48 sawmills lined the banks of Muskegon Lake. When operations ceased in 1916, a total of 25 billion feet of timber had floated down the Muskegon River.
In the 1880s, many lumbermen began migrating to the Upper Peninsula. The Pine, Manistique, Sturgeon, Whitefish, Rapid, Escanaba, AuTrain and Tahquamenon Rivers were prime lumbering streams. The Menominee River, forming the boundary bet ween Michigan and Wisconsin, carried the most timber. Dozens of sawmills dominated the economy of the twin
cities of Marinette and Menominee, located on either side of the river. In 1891, the peak year, 642 million board feet of pine was cut on the Menominee alone.
The logging cycle began with the timber cruiser. Armed with a map and compass he would tramp the wilderness for weeks seeking prime stands of white pine located near a stream, then race to the nearest U.S. land office to regist er the find. In the fall, "road monkeys" cut a tote road into the site, "tote teamsters" brought in supplies and equipment and "wood butchers" threw together some primitive camp buildings. A full crew of "shanty boys" arrived by the first snowfall and spent the entire winter felling trees, "bucking" them into logs, skidding logs to the "cross-haul," and loading giant sleigh loads of logs that might weigh as much as 60,000 pounds. "Sprinklers" worked at night to create an icy trail, and horses shod wit h caulked shoes pulled sleighs to the banking grounds adjacent to a stream. The "chickadee's" humble but necessary task was to keep the logging trails free of horse manure.
In the spring, when the ice melted and the streams ran high, the shanty boys donned "corked" boots for the river drive. "River hogs" broke up the huge piles of logs at the rollway and rode logs downstream to the sorting booms at the boo ming grounds. Using pike poles and peavies they unsnarled log jams and retrieved beached logs. A floating kitchen and headquarters called a wanigan followed the drive. When the thousands of logs arrived at the booming grounds, sorters identified each comp any's logs by a distinctive mark similar to a cattle brand, that had been hammered into the end of the log. The period when pine was king in Michigan brought wealth to timber barons, boom days for cities like Muskegon, Saginaw and Bay City and left a lega cy of folk tales about one of America's most colorful professions, the lumberjack.