Glory Days of Logging

by Ralph W. Andrews

Book Overview

The reissue of this classic history allows us to once again journey into the past and rediscover for the first time the forgotten men and methods of logging history in the Northwest United States and Canada. This book contain the best photographs of a dozen famous collections: Davis and Benson rafts, river drives, hand logging spar topping big wheels in the pine, saw mills of 1890 to 1915, historical ox teams, tractors, blumes. In this chronicle of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0887405932
• ISBN13: 9780887405938
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.2" x 10.5"

Customer Reviews

Photos & Stories From When Timber Was King

This is a classic for anyone interested in the history of logging in the Pacific Northwest. Together with Andrews other companion book, "This Was Sawmilling" the reader will gain a great understanding how trees were harvest, transported to mills and converted into the resources which built this Country. There's hundreds of wonderful photos from the woods along with many contraptions which loggers created to make their tasks either easier or more likely, more productive. Can you imagine a raft 1000 feet long and 30 feet wide and deep made out of logs laced together with huge chains? These structures containing millions of board feet of trees would be created in the far Northwest and floated down the coast to San Diego, CA and further. There's photos in the book. There's a great photo of a logger standing on the top of a tree hundreds of feet in the air just after he has completed preparation for high-lead logging. The book is separated into geographic regions from British Columbia and each of the States of the Northwest. It has numerous poems written about loggers. (Please don't call them lumber-jacks. I never heard a man who works in the woods called a lumber-jack all my years going up in Oregon. Yet a recent TV show about the worlds most dangerous jobs constantly referred to them a lumber-jacks.) Distraction of this classic includes the lack of a table of contents, index, and the disconnect between the photos and the stories. Which is to be expected. Andrews rarely had photos of the people in the stories and vice versa. Why this short-comings. Superior Publishing printed many of these books by folks who simply wanted to document the hard work of others. Regardless whether it was logging, railroading, or shipping they were willing to publish the books. Thank goodness they did or we'd never have had these classics. If you have an interest in the history of logging this book will be a great addition to your collection.