19th century logging — Let the drive begin

Let the log drive begin.

“A log drive was started at Palmer Falls yesterday and will be brought to the Big Boom above Glens Falls,” The Morning Star of Glens Falls reported on Aug. 9, 1895. “A river boat containing a tent, provisions and camp supplies was taken to Palmer Falls yesterday for the use of river drivers.”

“All the mills along the river are booming, owing to the favorable depth of water for sawing,” The Morning Star reported on Aug. 15. “A part of the log drive which was started from Palmer Falls a few days ago has reached the Big Boom and the Feeder Dam, but this main body of the drive is at a point called Hell Gate, above the Big Boom.”

In other 19th century logging and lumber industry news collected from historic newspapers of the region:

1880

“Eight or ten men from William & Shock’s wood job at Meigsville marched into town with their axes upon their shoulders this morning. They refuse to work longer under the present boss,” the Elizabethtown Post & Gazette reported on Feb. 5.

1881

• “Ransom Manning returned home from the lumber job with a broken jaw caused by being kicked by a horse,” the Saranac Lake correspondent reported in the Elizabethtown Post & Gazette on Feb. 24.
• “E. R. Derby has bought the sawmill of J. T. Clark and intends to repair it in the Spring by putting in a circular saw and some other machines,” the Saranac Lake correspondent reported on Feb. 24.
• “John Alexander is getting in a large stock of logs at the mill, the largest stock that has been there in years,” the Saranac Lake correspondent reported on Feb. 24.

1887

• “Our North Creek correspondent writes that the prospect of having good sleighing makes lumbermen happy,” The Morning Star reported on Dec. 29.

1888

• “Parties of lumbermen are daily passing through the village on their way to the woods,” the Luzerne correspondent reported in The Morning Star on Jan. 5.

1895

• “Nearly all of the machinery has been removed from the Morgan Lumber Company’s old sawmill in South Glens Falls and the work of tearing down is now progressing slowly,” The Morning Star reported on Aug. 29.
• “Charles Swanson has taken a three year’s lumber job at Beavery River (Herkimer County), and gone this week to countenance cutting and piling logs,” the Knowelhurst (Stony Creek) correspondent reported in The Morning Star on Aug. 31.
• “A gang of lumbermen in the employ of Patrick Crowe, formerly of Glens Falls, recently cut down a mammoth pine tree on the timber lands of the Morgan Lumber Company at Kunjamuck Creek, Hamilton County,” The Morning Star reported on Sept. 19. “The height of the tree was about 110 feet, and it yielded no logs of the usual length of fourteen feet.”

Click here to read the most recent previous 19th century logging post.