MICHIGAN HISTORY
The heyday of Michigan's lumber industry

Starting in the 1860s and for the next 40 years, Michigan was synonymous with pine lumbering, a dangerous and lucrative business.
The Detroit News ArchivesA vast belt of white pine grew across the Lower Peninsula and parts of the Upper Peninsula — towering cathedrals of Pinus strobus that could grow as tall as 175 feet, with stumps 8 feet in diameter.
The Detroit News ArchivesThe pine forests enabled the growth of logging camps like this one. Michigan lumber helped build an expanding nation.
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Pulp wood floats down a river in the Upper Peninsula in this undated photo. Michigan has a large network of waterways to transport timbered logs, and the logging industry was a big factor in Detroit's growth as an industrial and transportation hub.
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Before the crosscut saw was patented in 1873, the huge white pines were chopped with axes -– a daunting chore.
Hartwick Pines Logging MuseumHorses pull a sleigh of logs in this undated photo. Oxen were used until 1857, when an economic depression and the cost of hay forced companies to switch to horses, which ate less.
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In 1875, Manistee carriage shop owner Silas Overpack invented the "big wheels" that enabled logging in all four seasons. The giant iron-rimmed wheels came in three sizes and could carry logs from 12 to 15 feet long beneath their axles.
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This photo of "Chalker's Men," taken in the Grayling area circa 1890s, shows the noon-day meal out in the woods. Meals delivered to them by the camp cook might include soup or stew, beans, loaves of sourdough bread, cookies and pie, with hot tea and coffee.
Hartwick Pines Logging Museum
Logging roads needed be iced for easier transport of the logs. This sled, called a "sprinkler sled" or "water tank sled," was filled with water, which drained out behind the sled from holes in the back. A small stove was inserted into the side of the sled to keep the water from freezing.
Hartwick Pines Logging Museum
Workers harvest Norway pine timber hear Grayling, Mich., in the early 1890s.
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A winter street scene in Grayling, during the pine lumbering days of the early 1890s. The big wheels used to transport the logs were also a means of transportation to town.
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David Whitney Jr. made his millions in Massachusetts as a lumber baron, then moved to Detroit in 1857. He bought Michigan and Wisconsin pine lands, sometimes selling them for 100 times more than the original cost. When he died in 1900, Whitney was the wealthiest man in Detroit, with a fortune estimated at $15 million.
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The camp boss, scalers and other foremen usually had separate (and nicer) quarters than the rest of the men.
Hartwick Pines Logging Museum
These logging locomotives were used during the early 1890s in the pine regions of Michigan.
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The David E. Ward Estate in the Deward area between Grayling and Gaylord, Mich., contained some of the largest white pines in the Lower Peninsula. The number 7,225 on the log is the number of board feet (12"x12"x1" blocks) that the load contained.
Hartwick Pines Logging Museum
The big wheels carry the logs to the skidder, a vehicle with cables and winches used for transferring logs from the cutting area to a collection point.
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The teamsters who drove the horses were an important part of the logging camp crew. These men averaged about $2 a day in pay, while most of the workers made around $1 a day.
Hartwick Pines Logging MuseumBarges were loaded with cut timber in Saginaw, the center of the Michigan lumber industry, in this undated photo. In the last big year of logging — 1897 — the Saginaw River floated 125 million pine logs, representing a staggering 25 billion board feet of lumber.
The Detroit News ArchivesAn Upper Pennisula lumber camp is shown in this undated photo.
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A car drives through a hardwood forest in the northern lower peninsula circa 1930. In the 20th century, with the white pine forests already cut down, hardwoods such as maple, birch and beach became the principal trees harvested in lower Michigan.
The Detroit News ArchivesAn undated view of a Michigan lumbering camp.
The Detroit News ArchivesLumber is processed on the Muskegon waterfront in this undated illustration. The main centers for logging were Saginaw, Muskegon and Grand Rapids.
The Detroit News ArchivesA Michigan sawmill in 1923.
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Horses skid logs to the loading piles.
The Detroit News ArchivesThis towering 12-foot wheel was once part of a cart used to carry lumber.
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Tractors began to replace horses in the 1920s. They could handle more logs with greater speed.
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Pulpwood operations are seen at a large reducing mill in Ontanagon, Ontonagon County, circa 1930.
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A sawmill at the Antrim lumber camp near Gaylord, circa 1930.
The Detroit News ArchivesThe horse barn at a lumbering camp is seen in 1936.
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A cook's assistant blows a long tin horn to signal the lumberjacks to drop everything and come to dinner.
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Lumberjacks troop into the cook house in a camp of the Kneeland-Bigelow Company in Otsego County.
The Detroit News ArchivesTowers of newly cut boards symbolized an era of green gold.
The Detroit News ArchivesLumberjacks gather around the dinner table at a lumber camp in 1936.
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A worker cuts logs snagged from the Big Manistee River in 1940.
The Detroit News ArchivesLumberjack Lawrence Rickett was known as the "modern Paul Bunyan" in 1947.
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Two sawyers work on a maple tree.
The Detroit News ArchivesLumber grader Fay Meekin stands atop a pile of boards in 1949.
The Detroit News ArchivesDuncan Bruce and his horses pull a sled of logs in Oscoda in 1951.
The Detroit News ArchivesBen Nedwash and Joe Richie, veteran lumbermen, in 1951.
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Lumbermen work on a pile of logs by the Big Manistee River near Lake Michigan in 1940.
The Detroit News ArchivesWorkers stack lumber at a sawmill at Oscoda in 1951.
The Detroit News ArchivesOscoda sawmill, 1951.
The Detroit News ArchivesA worker at the mill at the Lewis Rodman camp in Silver Creek Valley, 1952.
Brittany Massey / Special To Detroit NewsBoards line a drainage ditch along the highway in 1953.
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This operation was part of the Kneeland-Bigelow holdings in Otsego County.
The Detroit News ArchivesFred Walker Harrisville and Duncan Bruce load logs on a sleigh in 1953.
The Detroit News ArchivesLogs unloaded from a boat go into an enclosed pen of water in 1953.
The Detroit News ArchivesWorkers Jim Dolan and Wayne Richards stand on a sawdust pile in 1953.
The Detroit News ArchivesA crane lifts logs onto rail cars in 1955.
The Detroit News ArchivesLumberjacks pike logs in the river in 1956.
The Detroit News ArchivesBy 1956, even the notch in the tree to be felled was cut with the chain saw, in Tapiola, Mich.
The Detroit News ArchivesLogs at a Michigan sawmill, 1958.
The Detroit News ArchivesTrucks prepare to haul transport loads of logs from a Michigan lumber company in 1960.
The Detroit News ArchivesThe Lumberman's Monument overlooking the Au Sable River, photographed in 1969.
The Detroit News ArchivesLumber is turned into paper in a vast building in Escanaba, Mich., 1981.
The Detroit News ArchivesHarry Woodmansee feeds a log into the saw blade at a Michigan mill in 1981.
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