Sidney43
Well-Known Member
I have been reading posts here for several years and have an occasional post. It is about time that I posted some pictures of my dads logging equipment and perhaps others will join in. Our family moved to the Klamath River area in far Northern Calif in the spring of 1955. I graduated from the eighth grade in a little mill town in NW Oregon (Cherry Grove) and we moved the next day along with our uphill neighbors. We stopped in Myrtle Creek, Oregon and helped the neighbors unload as he had a job with Roseburg Lumber Company and we then proceeded to the old mining town of Hamburg, CA about fifty miles down river from hwy 99. The trip was all on two lane highways in those days and the move took about ten hours. Our families entire possessions were in a 1951 Chevrolet PU, a small trailer and the family car.
My dad had started working in the woods when he was about eighteen and he never went past his freshman year in high school. My grandfather was a strong believer in hard work and not much for education, also the depression was still in effect and every extra dollar counted. His first logging jobs were with Flora Logging who ran a big operation out of Carlton, Oregon. This was RR logging and as I recall Flora was big enough to have either a Lidgerwood, or Willamette skidder. I just remember him telling me that soft RR grades caused lots of trouble with moving it and because of all the drums and cables of the dual purpose machine it was very dangerous to work around. Flora Logging lost a lot of equipment in one of the big Tillamook burns and they never recovered from the losses.
My first memories of logging were from around 1949 or 50 and there were small mills all over NW Oregon because the economy was booming and the era of the small gypo loggers was at hand. My dad was like many other who would log a patch of timber they contracted for from a farmer, or small land owner and they would sell it at whichever mill was paying better. It was not steady work and none of the jobs were very large. In 1954 he contracted with Hi Ridge Lumber in Seiad Valley, CA to log US Forest Service sales and this was his first large logging operation. Seiad Logging was the company and there were three partners, so naturally in a short time there were partnership issues. In case you are wondering "Seiad" is an Indian name for the valley where the mill was located.
Dad had looked at the logging contract for Ketchikan Pulp, but thought it was more than he was prepared to take on. He later said that the man who did take that job became a millionaire and I suppose that is true? In any case the first logging job was a forest burn up Seiad Creek on steep rocky ground. Because of the high cost of Caterpillar equipment, the partners purchased three Allis Chalmers tractors, two HD 15's and an HD 19. They would find out that these tractors were simply not up to the rigors of logging in this country.
Here are some pictures of those early tractors such as they are. Some of the pictures are of family making a visit to the landing and since log trucks were in short supply the landing was not a busy place on that day.
My dad had started working in the woods when he was about eighteen and he never went past his freshman year in high school. My grandfather was a strong believer in hard work and not much for education, also the depression was still in effect and every extra dollar counted. His first logging jobs were with Flora Logging who ran a big operation out of Carlton, Oregon. This was RR logging and as I recall Flora was big enough to have either a Lidgerwood, or Willamette skidder. I just remember him telling me that soft RR grades caused lots of trouble with moving it and because of all the drums and cables of the dual purpose machine it was very dangerous to work around. Flora Logging lost a lot of equipment in one of the big Tillamook burns and they never recovered from the losses.
My first memories of logging were from around 1949 or 50 and there were small mills all over NW Oregon because the economy was booming and the era of the small gypo loggers was at hand. My dad was like many other who would log a patch of timber they contracted for from a farmer, or small land owner and they would sell it at whichever mill was paying better. It was not steady work and none of the jobs were very large. In 1954 he contracted with Hi Ridge Lumber in Seiad Valley, CA to log US Forest Service sales and this was his first large logging operation. Seiad Logging was the company and there were three partners, so naturally in a short time there were partnership issues. In case you are wondering "Seiad" is an Indian name for the valley where the mill was located.
Dad had looked at the logging contract for Ketchikan Pulp, but thought it was more than he was prepared to take on. He later said that the man who did take that job became a millionaire and I suppose that is true? In any case the first logging job was a forest burn up Seiad Creek on steep rocky ground. Because of the high cost of Caterpillar equipment, the partners purchased three Allis Chalmers tractors, two HD 15's and an HD 19. They would find out that these tractors were simply not up to the rigors of logging in this country.
Here are some pictures of those early tractors such as they are. Some of the pictures are of family making a visit to the landing and since log trucks were in short supply the landing was not a busy place on that day.