icon for Home page
icon for Kid's Home page
icon for Digital Collection
icon for Activities
icon for Turns Exhibit
icon for In the Classroom
icon for Chronologies
icon for My Collection

Online Collection

Log Drive of 36,000,000 Feet.

The annual drive of logs from the wild Ammonoosuc river in New Hampshire, which has been cut the last season by the International Paper company, has been boomed at the mouth of that river during the last two weeks, until all of the ten million feet have reached there. Within a few days it has been let out into the Connecticut, and will begin arriving at Bellows Falls a short time ahead of the larger drive of the Connecticut River Lumber company.

The annual drive of the latter this year amounts to 36,000,000 feet and has been cut as follows: Four and one-half millions on Perry's stream in the township of Pittsburg, N.H., the northernmost town of the state; two million on what is known as the Colebrook Academy Grant in Colebrook, N. H.; twenty million on Paul's stream and its tributaries in the towns of Granby and Ferdinand and about eight and one-half million feet from along the east branch of the Nulhegan river in the town of Bloomfield. These different lots are being assembled in the Connecticut near North Stratford, N. H., and with a few million feet bought by Mr. Van Dyke at various points south of there will be brought down the river to their Holyoke mills in the next year two months.

The average amount of lumber in the annual drives the last 10 years has been about 40 millions, but last year it was a little less than thirty millions.

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.



label levels:

There is currently no available "Beginner" label. The following is the default level label: The huge log drive of some forty million feet this article describes was assembled near North Stratford, New Hampshire, in the spring of 1909. It capped a decade of intense lumbering all along the upper Connecticut River, at an unsustainable rate of exploitation. That meant that by 1920 the lumber harvest outside Maine was dramatically smaller and would soon nearly disappear. Lumbering in the U.S. had been relatively small-scale before the Civil War, but a number of technological advances increased the ability to harvest and saw wood. The double-bitted axe from around 1850, the crosscut saw from 1870, and steam-powered saws beginning in the 1850s increased a mill's output from the 1,000 board feet per day in 1800 to more than 50,000 board feet per day in 1880. Corporate changes also increased logging efficiency, particularly the consolidation of large lumber companies that began in the 1830s and dominated the industry by the 1880s.

 

top of page

"Log Drive of 36,000,000 Feet"

publisher   Greenfield Gazette and Courier
date   May 29, 1909
location   Greenfield, Massachusetts
height   4.25"
width   2.25"
process/materials   printed paper, ink
item type   Periodicals/Newspaper
accession #   #L02.090


Look Closer icon My Collection icon Document Image icon Detailed info icon


ecard icon Send an e-Postcard of this object



See Also...

"Burly Log Drivers Up River Start Biggest Drive Ever Seen"

"Log Drive Nearly Past Turners"

Log Driving on the Connecticut River


button for Side by Side Viewingbutton for Glossarybutton for Printing Helpbutton for How to Read Old Documents

 

Home | Online Collection | Things To Do | Turns Exhibit | Classroom | Chronologies | My Collection
About This Site | Site Index | Site Search | Feedback