"More Deadly than War": High-Lead Steam Logging Unit

Abstract

First there were the oxen, dragging the logs out of the virgin woods of the Northwest on skid roads built of poles. Animal power was replaced in the 1880s by the latent energy in the wood itself, in the form of steam; steam powered winches, or donkeys, used wire ropes to drag the logs in, and defined the first mechanized, ground-lead logging operations. Next came logging, bringing the logs in overhead, suspended on wire rope threaded through various complicated pulley systems and strung between two or more trees. This was an industrial version of a tenement clothesline, except that the donkey sped several tons of logs through the air instead of the household laundry and grabbed the timber with choker cables and not clothespins. In the early 1900s trees were still cut down with hand saws and sweat (Swedish steam), but the key to making money was to remove the trees as quickly and cheaply as possible, and the high-lead steam don key was just the ticket. The typical donkey, or yarder, grew through a steady diet of improve ments to nearly 50 tons. To move it, the crew mounted the machine on two big logs, called sleds, and fastened wire ropes to trees in the direction they wanted to take; then, like a catamaran sailing through the woods, the don key dragged itself forward, over hills and across rivers. It made for some impressive pictures. As the timber nearest roads and rivers was logged off, temporary railroads were built to where the trees remained. The locomo tives working these lines weighed upward of 100 tons. To negotiate the