Journal Article, With a Tightline

This 1925 article is from the Four L Bulletin, a magazine that the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen union issued between 1919 and 1924. In 1925, the magazine was renamed the Four L Lumber News.

The article is about a technological innovation for yarding logs in a more efficient manner, with less labor and damage to the logs. Beginning in the early 20th century, loggers used steam-powered engines called steam donkeys to haul cut logs up to a mile out of forests to transfer points. From transfer areas, logs were tied into rafts and floated on waterways, put into “chutes” (wooden troughs) and slid to another location, or loaded onto railroads for transportation to market.

The logging “show” (operation) featured in this article was in Tillamook County, in the north part of Oregon’s coastal mountain range. In the early 1900s, timber companies began heavy logging in Tillamook County. In the 1920s, the Whitney Company opened a high-capacity mill in Garibaldi and workers logged forests in that area. In 1933, a large forest fire known as the Tillamook Burn raged, burning up to 240,000 acres of forest land. Subsequent fires hit the region in 1939, 1945, and 1951. Timber companies then salvage-logged many of the trees that survived the fires.

Because of a timber shortage in the area, the Garibaldi mill closed down between 1935 and 1943. The mill reopened in 1944, producing plywood and cedar shingles and shakes. It closed for the last time in 1974.

Further Reading:
Strite, Daniel D. “Hurrah for Garibaldi!” Oregon Historical Quarterly 77, 1976: 213-237, 341-368.

Johnson, Merv. In Search of Steam Donkeys: Logging Equipment in Oregon. Hillsboro, Oreg., 1996.

Wells, Gail Wells. The Tillamook: A Created Forest Comes of Age. Corvallis, Oreg, 1999.

Written by Kathy Tucker, © Oregon Historical Society, 2002.