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Northern California logging

Sidney43

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Before I move on in time, the Peterbilt shown with the trailer being unloaded belonged to B&L Lumber Transport of Yreka, CA. The "L" in B&L was Howard Lantz and he was the main log hauler for pretty much the entire time the partners logged for J.F Sharp Lumber. He had about ten log trucks and all were Peterbilts as I recall. Other log haulers were Ray Jones and Lester Bagley. Ray Jones owned an International log truck and also had a low bed trailer. Les Bagley owned a Peterbilt which was driven by his son "Toke" Bagley and I might add that the nick name had nothing to do with modern useage of the term.
 

Sidney43

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While logging for J.F Sharp Lumber the partnership logged initially near the head of Seiad Creek, then for two consecutive years on Cade Mountain near Happy Camp, CA. These sales were Seattle Creek number one and Seattle Creek number two. Both were actually in the Thompson creek drainage. Then they moved to a sale on Haight Mountain near Tenant, CA about ten miles east of Hwy 97 which runs north from Weed, CA up into Oregon.

Tenant was an old Long-Bell Lumber Co logging camp out on the pine flats north of Mount Shasta. This was all RR logging although early Cats with arches were used in later years to get logs to a commonly used McGiffert loader. McGifferts sat above the tracks and empty cars were pulled forward from behind the machine to be loaded. The mainline RR from Weed, CA north was interesting in that Southern Pacific wanted another route north into Oregon, as there were tunnel issues with the route north over the Siskiyou Mountains into Oregon. Since Southern Pacific owned every other section of land for a distance on either side of a RR route, they had lots of timber to sell but no good way to get it to market. The agreement with Long-Bell Lumber was that the logging mainline would be built to common carrier specs and Long-Bell would get a huge source of timber. When the lumber company was through logging in the area the RR was deeded over to SP in some fashion. I have not looked to see when the mainline was pushed further north into Klamath Falls and on into central Oregon.

When we logged out of Tenant there were no power lines to the former company town, which was complete with a roundhouse, company housing and a large Buda diesel generator. Someone had bought the town and was fixing up the houses to sell for retirement homes. We rented one of the houses to live in and they were typical wood company structures. The generator only ran from six in the morning until ten at night and after that you were on your own.

Following the logging on Haight mountain in the fall of 1963 , the partnership moved to Cecilville, which is on the Salmon River drainage, a major tributary to the Klamath River. Some logging was done on Deadwood Creek that winter, but two years were spent logging in the Cecilville area and this brought the time line up to the spring of 1965 when They started logging for U.S Plywood at McCloud, CA. Unfortunately I have no pictures of this time period, only memories of when I worked summers for the partners and went to college to learn how not to be a logger.
 

Sidney43

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This is the last black and white image I have to post. We think it was taken in the Ash Creek area east of McCloud. The McCloud flats to the east of the town were typical easy to log pine country and that is what McCloud Lumber Company wanted for the various products the very large mill produced. Like many lumber companies of the time it was a company town with a mercantile store that gave credit and company housing. The rent was cheap and steam heat was provided from the mill boilers. If you lost your job, you lost your home. This was all RR logging and the McCloud River RR was actually a common carrier connecting the Southern Pacific at the town of Mt Shasta to the Great Northern at Beiber as I recall. If you want to read the whole history there is a great book titled "Pine Across the Mountain" that deals with the logging and RR history of this lumber company. In the sixties they were going back over previously logged ground and taking fir that was not wanted in the early days. There was some big timber in places and most was Douglas Fir changing to Shasta Fir and White Fir at higher elevations to the north.Walterwithbiglog.jpg
 

Sidney43

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Some more pictures of logging at various places around McCloud. I am told that these were probably taken up Pilgrim Creek north of Hwy 89 to the east of McCloud. Sorry for the poor quality, they will get better as I have some taken with my own cameras.

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Vigilant

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Interesting back stories on the photos too. Thanks.

I strongly suspect that the Lidgerwood tower skidder's design started with a variation of the McGiffert loader, beefed up, with more drums and a tower added.

The last 'pure' Lidgerwood skidder, Number 5 Skidder, came from Vail, where my dad was Superintendent in later years. And yes, I'm trolling, hoping someone from Vail might chime in.
 

Sidney43

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I have posted on the partnership logging out of Tenant, CA and that it was a former Long-Bell Lumber permanent logging camp for that area north of Mt Shasta. A while back I found on You Tube a video that had been taken by the company photographer that is partially in color and is about 11 minutes long. This was one reel of film found by a person at the Black Butte dump outside of Weed, CA. When the company photographer died his wife took all his film reels to the dump. When the person realized what he took home with him he went back to look for the hundreds of other reels, but they had been buried and lost forever. If you watch this film which was converted to digital you will realize the historical treasure that was lost. The film was probably shot in the late 1940's and there is no audio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aWszU7S4Ug

The D-8 sized cat seen in the film had a generator and the cutting crew was using an electric falling saw run by a generator on the Cat. Great images of a McGiffert loader in operation, cat skidding with arches and some views of the mainline RR built to be later turned over to Southern Pacific.

The Long-Bell mill at Weed, CA was a full utilization mill. Structural and planed lumber, veneer/plywood, sash and door, box and shook, it was all put to use and marketed. This mill operation was typical of large mills in Northern California up until the mid sixties. In addition to the mill at Weed, there was McCloud Lumber at McCloud, Fruit Growers at Hilt which was right on the Oregon border and Red River (later Fruit Growers) at Westwood near Susanville. Collins Pine at Chester, CA, Diamond Match at Chico, CA, Michigan California at Pino Grande on the Georgetown divide west of Placerville and many others not mentioned.
 

Sidney43

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A few more photos to post on logging for U.S. Plywood at McCloud - These were taken at Johnson Ranch just south of the golf course where some timber that had been left from prior logging was harvested. These are actually a jump ahead in time as they show the 966C that replaced the Northwest model 40. The Northwest replaced the Lima cable loader in about 1965 or 1966, but was in turn sold because it was too slow to move from landing to landing. The logging was going over ground that might have been logged thirty or forty years before and was not just cutting virgin tracts of timber where one landing was just a short distance away. Apparently equipment was being moved in as only the 966 and a Cat D6 where working and employees were pretty much standing around.

020.jpg023.jpg018.jpgNorthwestTimbermaster40.jpg
 

Sidney43

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I should have noted that the two men looking at the camera and standing beside the 966 loader in the second photo posted yesterday, are my younger brothers. Neal ran the loader and Gary who was just out of the Army was mostly working the landing. These photos are all taken in the days of cat logging and later rubber tired skidders on ground that was not (usually) too steep for that kind of logging. No high lead towers or grapple yarders to be found here, although there were some in use in the area on ground suited to that kind of logging. My dad told me on one of my photo excursions that McCloud was running a big yarder just a few miles away and apparently flying logs over a canyon to keep them out of a watershed, but I didn't make it over to get photos, because one of the choker setters did not show up that day and I ended up working and not taking any photos at all. On that day one of the older cats had been replaced by a Timberjack 505 and I cursed that fast machine as I didn't get enough down time. The logs were quite a skidding distance from the landing and usually I could sit and rest while the cat made the trip. It seemed like I had not more sat down until I heard the sound of the Detroit diesel coming back up the hill. Never have liked those machines to this day, although I loved the sound of the engine.

The photo of the Northwest Timbermaster is the only known picture of it unless I can locate some from other sources.

These photos are of two different trucking firms being loaded on a typical landing.

b5d12510-a458-463f-9ff4-0377ef345d75.jpga0c5dc4a-23e4-4b2e-a007-f121ff56c9ad.jpgbed0027b-1f9e-4b5e-add4-2f9c5db63165.jpg
 

Sidney43

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Some of the pictures posted and to be posted are not the typical photo of pieces of equipment. I kind of liked to take more personal shots like the last one on post #29 which shows a truck driver using the cheater to tighten the front wrapper while the loader stands on his machine and watches.

Going to post a couple of photos of off road trucks and loads, one I took and one by an unknown. Both were too close up to show the truck, mine because I didn't get it in focus and had too long a lens on the camera. One load is pine and the other is fir, so they were taken in different places, the pine load probably up the Pilgrim creek road.

7dc7ef83-f97c-4e08-86bc-804a384456a4.jpgKWwithlargeload.jpg
 

Sidney43

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Have to take the opportunity here since I posted the two off highway loads to tell a little story. As the trucks came down the Pilgrim Creek road, just before they would have to enter hwy 89 there was a private road that lead the to the mill about a mile and a half away. The road was rough and potholed , so the truckers got into the habit of ducking onto hwy89, driving the short distance, turning onto mill property and safety. One day a California Hwy Patrolman (weigh master) was lying in wait with his portable scales. In California at that time max weight on five axles was 78,000 lbs and these loads were far beyond that figure. He directed the truck driver to move onto the scales with the drive axles and the truck driver then related that the patrolman started cussing a blue streak. It seems the scales were simply crushed by the the load and no ticket could be issued. There was a stern warning that the next truck driver would simply be arrested if caught on the highway, although I don't know if they actually could have done that?

I have been told that the off highway trucks came from around Prineville, Oregon where they were used in winter logging. In northern California there were no off highway trucks, because at some point in the trip to the mill public highways had to be used. McCloud could have used off highway trucks, but due to the favorable ground, the existing miles of mainline trackage and the distance the logging was from the mill, the RR was used to transport logs up to 1963.

Tomorrow I am going to post a bit about McCloud River Lumber company along with a photo or two
 
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Sidney43

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McCloud River Lumber Company​

Have to devote a post to the lumber mill that my Dad and his partner logged for from 1965 until he retired in 1985. That is quite a long time for a contract logger and of course there were a few changes along the way. It was a bit interesting when I tried looking up information on the earlier mills like Hi-Ridge and J.F. Sharp, there simply isn't any. Most of these mills disappeared prior to the Internet and they were not big enough to warrant a historian, or a company photographer. They did not found a town, or provide the majority of the jobs for an entire town.

McCloud River Lumber Company was founded by two men, Scott and Van Arsdale in March of 1896, although it did not get that name until 1897. The key to success in logging the extensive pine stands around the new mill and to the east lay in building a RR to transport lumber over Snowmans Hill (a spur ridge of Mt. Shasta) to connect with the Southern Pacific at Sisson, later renamed Mt. Shasta City. In 1902 the holdings were sold to a Minnesota investor named Judson Carpenter and later came under common control along with three other lumber mills. Those mills were Shevlin-Hixon in Bend, Oregon - Shevlin-Clarke in Ft. Francis, Ontario and Carpenter-Hixon in Blind River, Ontario. The pine products were jointly marketed under the Shevlin Pine Sales name.

The McCloud mill was one of the largest in California and production usually exceeded 500,000 bd ft per day. In hindsight this kind of production did not consider the concept of sustained yield, even though at it's peak the company owned or controlled the timber rights on 600,000 acres which grew mostly east of McCloud. Although this was a large holding, the Red River Lumber Company mill in Westwood, CA owned or controlled over 1,250,000 acres of timber land and the two tracts abutted each other some thirty miles east of McCloud.

In 1963 McCloud River Lumber merged with U.S. Plywood Corporation who had a large mill and plywood plant at Anderson, CA just south of Redding, CA. which was about 60 miles to the south. In 1965 the company town of McCloud was sold and the era of employees living in cheap company housing ended. It had been a long, friendly relationship with the company taking care of all maintenance and proving heat and power. The company was often referred to as "Mother McCloud" , but like many good things it came to an end. In 1967 U.S. Plywood merged with Champion International, a large eastern paper producer. The timber lands were managed by Champion Timber lands and over the next few years the last stands of old growth fir were logged. The old style mill was no longer efficient, who needed two shotgun style carriages that could handle logs up to eight feet in diameter and returned so fast that setters could not ride them because of headache problems. A small log mill was built, but it never really worked out well and in the later seventies and early eighties logs were usually hauled to the Anderson, California mill, which is why most of the truckers in that time period were from the Redding area.

In 1979 the mill was closed, but was bought in 1980 by P&M Cedar, of Stockton, CA one of the largest producers of wooden pencils in the nation. Most of us are familiar with the yellow #2 pencil with the name Ticonderoga on it, but the market for those pencils was diminishing. The mill on the property closed for good in 2002, although it was not the original large log mill and had not been for a number of years. That ended a little over 100 years of sawmill activity in the town of McCloud, a pure company town, with the exception of the service station along hwy 89.

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Sidney43

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A couple of photos of equipment on a landing and loading a log truck owned by Leonard Isringhausen of Redding, CA. These photos were probably taken on the west side of McCloud reservoir on Hearst Corporation holdings that were managed and logged by Champion Timberlands at this time.

According to the date on the side of the photo they were taken, or at least processed in June of 1974.


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Sidney43

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Before I move on again, I found a couple of photos that belong in the narrative. The second photo is of the P&M Cedar mill in McCloud that replaced the original large log mill. The first photo is of Hi-Ridge Lumber Co after a new mill was built just outside of Yreka, CA. This was a much larger and more modern mill than the one the partnership started logging for in 1955 that was located in Seiad Valley. Unfortunately with no timber lands of their own, Hi-Ridge got caught in the down market conditions of the early 1980's and had to close. They had bid too much for timber sales and could not weather the economic storm. The mill was eventually torn down and the site sat more or less empty for about fifteen years. Fruit Growers has now purchased the site and is building a pallet mill to utilize small timber from thinning operations on their holdings down the Klamath River.

e30dcc61-4f43-44dc-9af7-6c14fb0ce193.jpg5333a948-712e-4cb7-afd9-cac057ac31e6.jpg
 
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Sidney43

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The next series of pictures and some narrative will cover the logging in the Kosk Creek basin which took place over about ten years. Kosk Creek is almost entirely owned by the Hearst Corporation and yes, that is the well known Hearst of newspaper fame. McCloud River and it's successors had logging rights on this basin which lies about twenty miles east and south of McCloud. It can be accessed via the north gate from a road off of Hwy 89 just east of Bartle, or through the south gate reached from Round Mountain, CA. The basin is about fifteen square miles and has been logged on and off since the 1920's, initially I think by Round Mountain Lumber Co. I observed old jammer style loader sitting off the road down the main branch of Kosk Creek in the early seventies with the name of that entity on it. No camera, so no pictures of it, but it is probably still there since access is limited to the area.

These first three images are of two Mack Thermodyn's owned by Dana Spooner of Cottonwood, CA.

5b9255f2-b663-497c-8db9-a9b49bb2001e.jpgf493a199-e7e7-4c4e-bb98-e664b0dec673.jpge6964036-224f-4f6e-bea4-dcd2c71b151d.jpg
 

Sidney43

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Vigilant - thank you for the correction on the engines in the Macks. I took the word of my brother who ran the 966 although I thought it didn't sound right. When the photos were taken I had a conversation with Dana Spooner and he mentioned that the truck in the last photo had a 400 Hp engine which he loved as he could pull the several mile adverse up to the summit a gear higher. That is he loved it until he noticed he was wearing his drivers out a lot faster from loss of traction that he had not noticed. I suspect from the HP rating that the engines were Cummins, but the truck experts who read these pages would know a lot more about that.

I have been hoping that more people would either comment or post, as I get to feeling a bit lonely on this thread. :)
 

Vigilant

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Thank YOU, Mister Sidney. I have enjoyed your posts.

The only similar nomenclature I recall in the R Model line was Maxidyne and Econodyne, or something similar.

Some of the earlier R Models still came with a 673, the Holy Grail of B Model engines. It is possible that some of those early R Models could in fact have been badged as Thermodynes. I drove a few of the early 673-equipped R Models, some with a Duplex and some with a Quadruplex.

Pause while I search......

Wait, wait........ There it is. See Post Number 2.

http://www.bigmacktrucks.com/index.php?/topic/11168-thermodyne-and-maxidyne/
 

Vigilant

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I find it ironic that Mack was so proud of their stinking 5-speed Maxitorque. I never cared for them worth a crap. I also suspect that the stinking 5-speed Maxi could very well have cost a few West Coast loggers and others their life, if they met another vehicle coming up a winding hill loaded, had to stop, and then slowly roll back downhill through the tight curves because they did not have a low enough gear to start off in on an uphill grade.
 
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