Unbelievable Horse Logging pic

Is this practical, doable or some kind of trick photo? It seems to me that even if the horses could pull that load brakes in that day would have surely been lacking. And this was before rubber tires too. That load woul pull mighty hard. My expierience is only with bob-sleds and they sure didn't pull loads like that!

The logs he hauled were much longer 16' 18' to 26', thus they only piled them about 6' deep on sleds. I've heard him speak of putting 5" pole under runners during loading so the start would be easier for the horses. On the down grades they used sand, straw, sawdust, chains around runners. They would use a two road system much like our freeways, the road for taking empty sleds back was never sanded. These guys never hauled up hill, logging in the early days was about pileing the logs on the river or lake bank for the water drive to mill in spring. Horses all had corked shoes.

My dad tells a story about a logging boss fed up with all these farm boys and their horses. Many of the operations he went to would have 15-20 farm teams with sleds. This particular boss decided it was time to go with a Cat 20 crawler. He cut the tongue off one set of sleds, put a guy to work on same road with horses. The area they were working had some down grade but nothing that required sanding, etc. for the horses. The 20 could not haul any more load than the horses, whats more it couldn't hold back near as much as horses on the down grade. 3 times the first day, they had lineups of horse teams waiting for the jack knifed 20 to be removed from trail.

I saw something similar much later, Farmall 560D with ice chains hauled a load on sleds, on hard frozen ground, that a Cat D-7 could not handle. I say not handle as the D-7 did get up the hills with a lot of scratching and spinning. On the down grade the D-7 would jack kinfe at the slightest mis allinement between tractor and sleds. The 560 rolled up hill and down 3rd gear and never missed a beat.

No trick photography needed.

My grandfather logged in the NW area of Michigan's UP in the late 1800's-early 1900's. Loggers could work in the swampy woods only after the ground was frozen. That being so, the skidding trails and main logging roads were sprayed with water to make ice roads. Summers, Gramps farmed, delivered mail, fished & whatever else needed to keep the family going. I've seen a couple of these tanker sleighs in UP logging museums; quite large but easily pulled by a team of horses.

Loads of logs like you see in the pictures were skidded either to a rail head or, most often up here were piled on the bank of a river to await the spring thaw when they would be floated downstream to the sawmills. In the 1880s, the lumbering stream in the Upper Peninsula that carried the most timber was the Menominee River, the boundary between Michigan and Wisconsin. Dozens of sawmills dominated the economy of the twin cities of Marinette, WI and Menominee, MI (my home town), which straddle the river. In 1891, the peak year, 642 million board feet of pine was cut on the Menominee alone. White pine made Michigan the biggest lumber producing state from 1860 till 1910. Much of the lumber used to rebuild Chicago after the great 1871 fire came from the mills at the mouth of the Menominee River.

Tom

I would believe it. When I bought my tractor it was early in April, the battery was flat, and it most certainly wasn't going to start on the crank. So the former owner, who does a lot of logging with a team of horses, said no problem. We hitched up the team and attached them to that old tractor. A short while later we were heading uphill on an old dirt road and I let the clutch in in 3rd gear (this is my first tractor and was the first time I'ld tow started anything). The rear wheels locked up and we were plowing furrows up that old road at 6 mph and the horses hardly even noticed us behind them. That certainly opened my eyes and gave me a serious respect for what a horse can do. Hopefully there is an image along with this. SAm in NS

oh wow gus!☺

Dean

Do you think it might have been on a rail track. Track covered with snow?

Dave Olson - East-Central Illinois

1)Put sand on the hills
2)Wrap a logging chain around each sled runner
3)For really big hills they had a cable winch driven by a steam engine to pull the sled up the hill and then going down the hill the winch had a brake on it.

Merry Xmas
JB2

That said: I am a believer in progress. Today's chain saws, not to mention all kinds of other technology are far superior to that of yesterday. Just think what we could accomplish with this technology were it not for the OVER regulation of the nanny state.

Yes, the picture is no doubt realistic. Perhaps the team only pulled the load on level or uphill terain. Alternatively, all kinds of load managing techniques were used to lower heavy loads down inclines, e.g., block and tackles and other rope restraints.

Dean

Up here they started using horses again for "selective" logging in protected areas. They take out what they call "old growth" trees and utilizing horses minimizes the damage to the rest of the area. As far as I know they only use 1 or 2 horses at a time pulling a couple trees.