Today's Joke - 2023 Mega Thread

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Sorry I couldn't get it to download properly.
In my area Horse logging was big for a long time. Plenty of pictures to verify. Very good reasons why most logging was done after it snowed back in the day. There are documentaries on it, including ones that talk about how to stop a load.

Also cutting ice on lakes during the winter and covering the blocks with sawdust or straw. We have ice tongs and ice saws that come up at auctions.
 

Sorry I couldn't get it to download properly.
In my area Horse logging was big for a long time. Plenty of pictures to verify. Very good reasons why most logging was done after it snowed back in the day. There are documentaries on it, including ones that talk about how to stop a load.

Also cutting ice on lakes during the winter and covering the blocks with sawdust or straw. We have ice tongs and ice saws that come up at auctions.
And folks think they have it bad now a days!!
That is some beautiful looking timber back then.
 
Logging was also big in the Northern Wisconsin Pinery but the old growth forests had pretty much disappeared by mid nineteenth century. I have seen old photos of old growth logs with diameters approaching 5 ft.

Logs were cut and in the winter, hauled to steams and rivers by skidding or on sledges. The streams and rivers were dammed up and when the Spring thaw started, the dams were removed, usually by blowing up, first with black powder and later with dynamite, and the logs were floated down river to the saw mills. Log jams were a big problem and men would ride the logs down the rivers, busting up the jams with peavy poles or some times with explosives. That was the most dangerous part of logging and quite a few raftsmen lost their lives. Nineteenth century Chicago was built with Pinery lumber.

On a flowage where where I go fishing every Spring, there is a spot called the Narrows where the confluence of three creeks and rivers flows through a channel about fifty feet wide. One year when I was working the area, I found a structure on the other side of a small island that created the channel that was several hundred feet long and perfectly straight. The top of the structure was about ten feet deep and it dropped down to eighteen feet within a foot or two. I surmised that this was a man made structure made to facilitate damming up the up stream water, creating a pool of water of more than 2 billion cu. ft. in preparation for the Spring thaw and moving logs down river.
 

Sorry I couldn't get it to download properly.
In my area Horse logging was big for a long time. Plenty of pictures to verify. Very good reasons why most logging was done after it snowed back in the day. There are documentaries on it, including ones that talk about how to stop a load.

Also cutting ice on lakes during the winter and covering the blocks with sawdust or straw. We have ice tongs and ice saws that come up at auctions.
Yep, they definitely moved logs with horse teams. Winter was good because the ground freezes and at least where I lived in northern Michigan it's mostly swamp in the summer.

But, for certain guys stacked logs up way higher than they would ever transport. Remember, photography was fairly rare so when there was a chance to take a photo they did their best to make it memorable.

And as for big trees, we've got the biggest here out west.


John
 
In the last couple years they pulled some sunken logs out of flathead lake by a old sawmill location that were left overs from the logging days. They were floated down from various rivers. When the flathead valley was first settled paddle boats brought in most people and goods before wagon passible roads could be built. The town of Whitefish was called stump town. Close to Glacier national Park there is parts of a old steam ship still in the river. There are a couple of wood boats still giving tours on the lakes in Glacier national Park that are close to a hundred years old. History can be so cool.


And something to keep the thread on track
 

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