 Big Wheels were horse drawn and used to move logs without having to lift them up onto a wagon or drag them long distances to the rivers that carried the logs in Spring. Itinerant and local photographers visited the camps to take photos for the residents to purchase. |
Indian Wrestling - |
The small gauge logging steam engine was introduced to carry the logs from places that were not accessible by water. The trains burned waste wood, which was plentiful, and could be used during every season for transporting wood to the various Lake Michigan docks along Green Bay or to county mills. This engine was backing into position. |
Temporary cabins were constructed right after the harvest season in fall, by the woodsmen, in the area to be worked. These log buildings housed the loggers and other camp residents for that particular winter. These were typical of the late 1800's from the Wheeler area, which is now known as Lakewood, in the northwestern part of the county. Often they were dismantled and rebuild the next fall in a new location. |
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A typical winter camp on a quiet Sunday morning. Sundays were the only days off that the camp staff had. Every other morning of the week saw activity start well before dawn. |
By the age of 19, in 1902, Jack Philippi was a 10 year veteran of winter logging camps. At age 9 he worked for 35 cents a week sawing the discarded limbs and branches into firewood for camp use and to sell to village people. He went on to learn all the logging skills and become crew foreman before "retiring" to dairy farming near Suring. |
The long hard winter shows in the faces of this camp crew, most of whom had "cleaned up" in anticipation of leaving for home that spring. The long, thick beards and heads of hair that helped to protect the head from cold winds are shaven off. |
The farm wood lot was not only a very important source of all the cut wood needed to keep family life going, it was also a source of winter income as logs were sold to nearby mills. This team of horses, near Stiles, was used year round for logging and farming. |
This is a spring river driving crew who have probably posed on their Sunday off. Winter cut logs were floated down to the mills or to landings where they were "fished out" and taken to the mills. The cook's family, children included, followed the log run in a floating raft with cook house and sleeping quarters on board. |
The end result of the Oconto County lumbering process is seen in these stacks waiting to be shipped by boat and train to places all over the world. Articles from the newspapers of the late 1800's bragged about the superior pine of Oconto County being found in buildings on "every major continent in the world". |