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Rivermen Reach Turners Falls

Logs are Smaller Than They Were a Few Years Ago.

The rear of the log drive has arrived at Turners Falls and as is the custom about 60 who are hired to come to that place were paid off and started for their homes in the north. The drive this year contained between 50 and 60 million feet, a larger part of which supplies the Turners Falls Lumber company. The balance is taken to the Mt. Tom mills. The logs are cut near Connecticut Lake, the logs are somewhat smaller than the past few years but are of good quality. The men begin to cut the logs about November and they are drawn by horses to the creeks so that when the spring freshets come they are carried into the river. The snow the past winter was so deep that it interfered somewhat and reduced the drive to some extent. The Connecticut lumber company has been driving logs down the Connecticut river for the past 18 or 20 years. The men are hardy, good natured fellows, and most of them save their earnings as they have families in the north. The rivermen's life is a hard one and at times quite dangerous, but the men enjoy it and have good times in the camps coming down the river.

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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The log drive down the Connecticut was an annual ritual from the 1890s until about 1920. This drive brought spruce logs harvested in the far northwest portion of New Hampshire, at the series of lakes named Lake One through Four. The Turners Falls Lumber Company cut around nine million feet of lumber in 1895, only a fraction of the fifty to sixty million feet then being run past the mill, as this article notes, in 1900. By 1909, drives of around thirty-five million feet will be common, part of an overall declining trend.

 

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"Rivermen Reach Turners Falls"

publisher   Greenfield Gazette and Courier
date   Jul 21, 1900
location   Greenfield, Massachusetts
height   3.5"
width   2.25"
process/materials   printed paper, ink
item type   Periodicals/Newspaper
accession #   #L02.088


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See Also...

"Log Drive Nears Turners Falls" article in Greenfield's Gazette and Courier newspaper

"Log Drive Nearly Past Turners"

Log Driving on the Connecticut River


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