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The annual log drive on the Connecticut River often tied up the river for weeks at a time as hundreds of thousands of hundred foot-logs floated to the mills at Turners Falls and at the base of Mt. Tom in Holyoke. To prevent damage from stray logs and to keep the majority of the trees in the channel, long log booms were strung along the river. The gang described here arrived in their launch, the "Van Dyke," named for George Van Dyke, the owner of the Connecticut Valley Lumber Company and the Mt. Tom mill. The sluice they are installing is used to route logs over the dam and further downstream.

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