Log Drives on the River

Every year hundreds of very tough river men descended from the North Woods to guide this wooden juggernaut of 250,000 spruce logs down the Connecticut, taking four months to travel the 300 miles from the river’s headwaters near Quebec to sawmills in Massachusetts. The drive began in April, with the logs flushed out of the woods’ streams and brooks by snow melt. The loggers built large wooden dams to hold back heads of water behind artificial lakes providing the force necessary to float 40-foot-long logs to the mainstem of the Connecticut River. Once the logs reached the Connecticut, the difficulties multiplied, as the river had many stretches of white-water rapids. Logs caught in natural obstacles collected into jams, and sometimes thousands of logs formed a huge jam that had to be freed through the dangerous practice of using dynamite.

As many as a dozen men drowned in a single drive, with most of these drownings occurring trying to untangle jams. In addition to natural obstacles, the Connecticut was spanned by many bridges with stone supporting piers. Log jams against these piers were very common events, and sometimes the jams grew so large that the bridge was swept away.

At Bellows Falls and Turners Falls, Mass., the log drive often stalled, sometimes for as long as six weeks, because of these dams. The saloons in these towns did a brisk business, as did the purveyors catering to the men’s “more earthy” needs, and it wasn’t uncommon for fights to break out not only between loggers, but between them and the locals.

“Divers in the 1990s found In many places the riverbed of the Connecticut is a museum of log drive artifacts: lost tools, whiskey bottles, boom chains, log cribs that anchored booms, sunken bateaus and even the occasional spruce log have been found by divers. ” by state laws these artifacts may not be removed or disturbed. They are non-renewable historical resources.

BOOKS
Bill Gove’s : Log Drives on the Connecticut River
Robert Pike: Tall Trees, Tough Men
Robert Pike: Spiked Boots

SHORT ARTICLES
Loggers and River Drivers, Fairbanks Museum (PDF)
River Driving Memories
Loggers and River Drivers
Robert E. Pike, Log Drive on the Connecticut
Logging on the Connecticut River

IMAGES
Log Jam at Narrows
Holyoke Logs
Log Driving on the Connecticut River
River Log Drives: Forest History Society’s Flickr Set
Mt. Tom Lumber Co., Northampton
Logging at the Oxbow on the Connecticut River near Holyoke, Mass.
"Log Drive of 36,000,000 Feet", Greenfield Gazette and Courier (1909)
Turners Falls Log Jam
Turners Falls Log Jam
Logs filling River
Sorting Logs, Barton’s Cove
Turners Falls Log Sluice 1915
Turners Falls Log Sluice 1915
Turners Falls Lumber Company, Riverside
Turners Falls Lumber Company, Riverside
Log Drive Cook Shack on Connecticut River (1912)
Cook Shack
Logging at Turners Falls Dam
Logging at the Oxbow on the Connecticut River near Holyoke, Mass.
Log crew working above Sunderland Bridge (c. 1900)
Peavies
Bateau
Bateau

VIDEOS
Dynamite, Whiskey and Wood
Dynamite, Whiskey and Wood
YouTube Videos:
River Log Drive
Log Rolling
Last Log drive on the Kennebec
Adirondack Log Drive ca. 1900
THE ADIRONDACKS | Logging | PBS
Forest History Society YouTube Channel
Modern Marvels Logging Tech Videos

NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS
“A Spruce Drive on the Connecticut: How the Men Live and Work During the Summer Season", New York Times (1895)
“Log Drive nears Turners Falls", Greenfield Gazette and Courier (1908)
“Rivermen reach Turners Falls", Greenfield Gazette and Courier (1900)
“Log Drive Nearly Past Turners" Greenfield Gazette and Courier (1909)
"Log Drive Passing Turners Falls", Greenfield Gazette and Courier(1908)
"Burly Log Drivers Up River Start Biggest Drive Ever Seen", Greenfield Gazette and Courier (1911)
“Annual Log Drive on the River", Greenfield Gazette and Courier (1909)
“Gang of Loggers Arrive", Greenfield Gazette and Courier (1908)
Boston Evening Transcript (1905)
“Forest to Stream: Water carried Wood from Place to Place", Brattleboro Reformer (2002)
Geo. Van Dyke, Wealthy Lumberman, and Chauffeur Crushed in Fall of 75 Feet: New York Times (1909)
Timber Baron: George Van Dyke was King of the Connecticut River Log Drives

MUSIC
The Log Drivers Waltz
Lumber jack song
Lumber jack song (auf deutsch)