Vintage logging – Log dump – WoodchuckCanuck.com

Each Saturday morning I review 10 vintage logging, forestry and saw milling photos. This week’s review of vintage photos takes a look at the log dumping areas, where logs were dropped into rivers, lakes and ponds for transportation further downstream.

Be sure to click on each picture to see the larger images.

Floating logs and logs on railcars in foreground, mill in middle ground, and forest in background.

Looking west at the sawmill, an A-frame crane moves logs from a train to the log pond. Yosemite Lumber, Merced Falls.

Rights Information: Feb 28 2019 Special permission granted by the owning institution, California State University, Chico, CA, US, to WoodchuckCanuck.com, for use of this image for historical logging special collection review. Source: cdlib.org

1930 Crew at loading site below railroad trestle, camp 3, Clemons Logging Company, near Melbourne.

Clemons Logging Company was organized in 1903. Charles H. Clemons was the first president. The company had a logging camp in the Melbourne area. In 1919, the company was consolidated with the Melbourne and North River Railroad Company, an eight mile logging railroad extending from Melbourne to Montesano. In 1919, the company was reorganized as the Clemons Logging Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company. The company operated a 75 mile logging railroad in the Montesano area. In 1936, the company was merged into the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company. Its locomotives were later sold to the Murphy Lumber Company, Discovery Bay Logging Company, Craig Mountain (Idaho) and West Fork Logging Company. The company was dissolved on June 29, 1937. In 1941, the original logging site was dedicated as the first tree farm in Washington.

Melbourne was a logging center on the Chehalis River seven and a half miles east of Aberdeen in south central Grays Harbor County. It was named for Melbourne, Australia, by Reuben Redmond when he platted the town in the late 1850s. Redmond was a father-in-law of Samuel Benn who founded Aberdeen in the same period.