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| THE FIFTY SAW LOGS - At the Centennial
Exposition a load of saw-logs was shown that numbered twenty-five.
The Michigan lumbermen determined to outdo this deed of logging, and,
with that intent put thirty-six thousand feet of lumber on a sled and
drew it down an incline for a quarter-mile with a single span of
horses. The weight was one hundred and forty-five tons, or
twenty-one tons more than the Krupp gun.
The load was hauled to the Ontonagon River by the Nester Brothers, of
Baraga, and although the logs were all piled on one sled, nine
flat-cars were required for their transportation to Chicago. This
prodigious burden was in view from the trains of the Intramural
Elevated Railroad, and evoked expressions of amazement and
incredulity from millions of people. Whether necessarily or not, the
logs are so placed as to enlarge the bulk of the load. The Loggers'
Camp, of which this exhibit formed a part, was intended to typify the
methods by which the pine lumber of the West has been furnished to
commerce. There was a log cabin seventy by twenty feet, in which
lumberman lived on johnny-cake, pork and beans, and black coffee.
The tools of lumbering were exhibited in chronological order, and
near by was a large saw-mill two hundred by one hundred and
twenty-five feet in area, with the latest appliances for handling
timber. Here nearly all the pieces displayed in the Forestry
Building were sawn into their peculiar shapes, and here a machine
dragged a log upstairs and kicked it overboard in almost human
manner. Band saws were used. |
