Vintage logging – Sleighs and Winter

Each Saturday morning I review 10 vintage logging, forestry and saw milling photos. This week’s review of vintage logging is about winter scenes including sleighs and other means of transport over the snow.

Click on the images to view larger pictures. If the pictures are not larger, I don’t have an explanation as to why it might not be showing for you. Some people can see them, others cannot.

Lombard Steam Log Hauler and its crew deep in the woods. Note the young boy standing on the right hand steering runner at the front of the machine and another crew member standing on the left hand track operating the steam whistle. To operate one of these machines took a crew of four.

The Lombard was invented by Alvin Orlando Lombard and first patented in 1901. It was a very creative way of combining the power of steam, with tracks to move lumber out of the woods. Previous to this invention logs were pulled out of the woods with horses.

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1935 Anderson boys bringing in a sleigh load of wood, Palling, BC.

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His wife takes up the role of the cook. The size of the harvested logs is worth noting.

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A caravan of large sleds is towed by a caterpillar tractor.

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The use of a caterpillar tractor to pull logging sleighs in the 1940s ear-marks the gradual disappearance of the horse in bush operations.

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Decking logs on T.L. 3896

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The men are proud of their horses, those indispensable working beasts. The shot-gun can prove useful if by chance a prying and over-inquisitive deer draws near the camp. Wild game help alleviate the monotonous shanty menu. Amidst the lumberjacks, there are a few childlike gazes.

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The first Linn Tractor used by the Gould Paper Company in 1918; logs were transported over haul roads to landings beside rivers to await spring-thaw log drives. Photo: Courtesy of the William J. O’Hern Collection

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