Before the chainsaw....

Not sure if this has been posted here but I found it interesting and amazing.......

Before the chainsaw



When the Northwest logging industry was still young...
Just look at the length of the hand saw ...




...and look at the size of the heavy duty axes...




The work required very strong and courageous men...



After a tree was felled the real work began a week or more to cut it up...



Maneuvering the logs down the mountain to the train was a complex job...



Some of the logs were larger than the train engine...


A hollowed out log became the company's mobile office...



Hollowed out logs were used to house and feed the crews...
Can you imagine this generation's young men attempting this?

None of your pics are loading.

Sorry about that, fixed......

WOW,

That's when men were men!

I can't even imagine what that sounded like when it hit the ground!
It's amazing how long things took then yet they still accomplished a lot,
Today we have so much more but it's seems nothing gets done.

The limbs would give me rounds that needed split for firewood

I know it was a different time but makes me feel bad every time I see pictures like that. Sorry to be a kill joy.

I've seen those pictures many times and never tire of them. Thanks for posting.

Why??

Majestic beauty that took a millenium to grow, cut down in a relative instant. I wish they were all still here.

Because it represents the disappearance of the old growth forests.

Some 30 years ago I worked on Northern Vancouver island for an outfit cutting cedar shake blocks out of fallen and dead old growth cedars. many of the trunks of the trees we cut into were as big as or bigger than that mobile office shown in that pictures. All the stuff we cut was the left over crumbs from when the original logging outfits went through there and clear cut out all the original old growth trees.

Bingo LJ, I suspect after thousands of years where the average age was 40 and infant mortality was 20% (made up #'s but you get the idea) we had to go through a period where we tried to show our "mastery" of nature but it's a damn shame those ancient trees were clear cut. If some wonder "why" that stinks then I guess little has changed.

Just doing a little reading before going to bed and thinking of the busy day I have tomorrow of roasting coffee and putting it in bags, I wouldn't last a day doing the kind of work those guys did and with those tools.

It is sad though to look at those massive trees and what was lost in a relatively short period of time...

WOW! Instead of just yelling "timbeeeeer", you probably had to notify the next two villages on the down side of the tree!

WOW!

No big deal. Took me a while to figure just where and how deep to notch this one.



Done, but a bit smaller one.



Looking at another one.



After dropping that one tree we had to cut out a path.



That's my wife looking at that tree and wondering if I could drop it and how many years of firewood it would produce.



This one was closer to home. That is my wife resting because I made her fell this tree.

Its bittersweet, IMO. Yeah, its really sad to see most of the old growth forests raped like that. But its amazing that those young men did it all by their own shoulders and backs........very impressive, especially when you look at today's younger generation. You just don't see a lot of that breed anymore. That chit would make a man out of you real quick!

Oh, I know real men still walk the earth. But back in the day, those guys did it all by hand.......

Love those old pics, Scotty! Hiked around Olympic NP, didn't see anything quite that big.

One of the men in this photo was my wife's Dad a logger back in Whitmer, WV (of course I forget which one he is)!

Charlie also a decent guitar player.
Big trees, big fun. There used to be some giant trees in Australia as well. They died from some ecological change several thousand years ago but the trees are being harvested from the ground (sank into swamp which preserved them/semi petrified). Big like Redwoods but I thinks they were desiduous (sp?) trees which would be really something to behold.

...I think he's the one in the hat.