Logging in Plumas County

By Scott J. Lawson and Daniel R. Elliott

Located within the northern Sierra Nevada mountain range, the forests of Plumas County were once seen as a source of endless timber. Lumber was needed during the Gold Rush for water flumes, mine timbers, and an array of buildings. While timber was abundant, the abilities of the early settlers to harvest, transport, and mill the logs were often very limited. Markets remained relatively local throughout the second half of the 19th century until the completion of the Western Pacific Railroad in 1909. This sparked a new rush of industry into the region. Vast tracts of untapped Plumas County timber were bought up by speculators, and many sawmills were erected. Logging in the western United States moved from animal power to steam engines to internal combustion in the space of about 50 years. While Plumas County s lumber industry was reflective of these developments, it also found its own identity as a timber-producing region that was nearly unequaled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Aug 18, 2008
• ISBN: 9781439620830

Scott J. Lawson

The distinctive history of Quincy is illustrated here in more than 200 vintage photographs gathered by Scott J. Lawson from the extensive collection of the Plumas County Museum Association. In this volume, striking images from Quincy's past showcase local businesses, schools, churches, landmarks, and celebrations, capturing the unique spirit of the area's residents as well as the magnificent land on which they live.

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Wood.

INTRODUCTION

Motivations for writing a book can be many. Our effort in Logging in Plumas County has a number of goals, the primary of which is to share an impressive collection of historic photographs relating to one of the most important industries to have existed in Plumas County.

As historians, we also share a passion for local history that encompasses all of its aspects. As a professional archaeologist, Dan has spent many years deciphering the remnants of past activities within the forests of the northern Sierra Nevada. Such evidence frequently includes the traces of old logging and railroad operations. He also does it for personal interest. Scott’s interest in logging comes from his love of local history, from having worked in the woods himself, and from his logger ancestors going back at least to his great-grandfather. His father, several cousins, and an uncle have made their living from woods work as well.

In this book, we will present the history of logging as it occurred in Plumas County, which, in fact, mirrors almost exactly the growth of the same industry throughout the Sierra. Ironically, it was timber that sparked the largest peacetime migration in the history of the United States. The discovery of gold at one of California’s first sawmills touched off the 1849 California Gold Rush, which proved to be the catalyst for the timber industry. Exploiting California’s natural resources came easily to the forty-niners, and within a few short years lumber mills had popped up throughout the length and breadth of the Sierra.

Plumas County’s first water-powered sawmill was located on Bachelder’s Creek (now Bach Creek) on the Middle Fork Feather River in 1851. Close on its heels, a dozen or more mills spread throughout the county and began making boards and sawdust. Lumber for mining operations, cabins, tools, and myriad other uses and the miners’ willingness to pay in gold prompted many would-be miners to become lumbermen. Many of these entrepreneurs first made their stake cutting lumber by hand using whipsaws in sawpits, which proved terribly hard work but was exceedingly profitable at the time.

As more people settled in the county and as industries and communities began to take on a semblance of permanency, lumber mills became even more in demand. For the first 50 or so years, the mills relied almost strictly on local demand. With the completion of the transcontinental Western Pacific Railroad in 1909, Plumas County began to play a part in the national demand for wood products. Many new mills tried to set up somewhere near the railroad to expedite their shipping process. Whereas in the past the mills were placed near the timber, now the logs were brought to the mill from increasingly distant locations. Production capacities of sawmills in the post–Western Pacific era were also greatly increased over earlier operations.

The story of logging in Plumas County also follows the technological evolution and the many advancements that occurred throughout the industry over the past 100 years. Even with the changes from handsaws and axes to high-speed chainsaws; from plodding oxen to huge diesel trucks; from smoke-belching donkey engines to Caterpillars and feller-bunchers, the work of logging still remains a tough, exacting, and dangerous occupation.

Sawmills have also undergone enormous changes. From waterpower, to steam, to electricity, mills have developed new and innovative ways to economically and efficiently cut lumber from the logs brought in from the woods. Circular saws found replacements with bandsaws, and now computers and lasers do much of the work formerly done by human skill.

We hope you will enjoy this look at the growth and change of logging and lumbering in Plumas County and the wonderful assortment of vintage photographs depicting this exciting and vital industry.

This group of unidentified young women stands triumphantly around the stump of a Douglas fir they have just felled with axes and a handsaw near Greenville. Labeled only as College of Women Loggers, these ladies were instructed in the art of timber falling by a bare-chested burly logger who was a part of this mid-1950s Newsreel program.

One

LOCAL LUMBER DEMAND

This group of unidentified loggers poses with a huge sugar pine log loaded on a solid-wheel wagon west of today’s Bucks Lake in 1889. In the early years of logging, mules and oxen were used to skid logs from the woods to nearby mills. As the trees were cut and hauling distances increased, the need for reliable transportation demanded new technology. Wagons with solid wood wheels were developed to haul behemoths like the log pictured here. The loggers’ imagination, innovation, and plain hard work became a tradition that is carried on to this day.

The discovery of gold in 1848 at Sutter’s new sawmill at Coloma sparked an unprecedented rush of immigrants to California. With the miners came the need for lumber for mining enterprises, houses, stores, and many other uses. The northern Sierra Nevada was no exception: small, water-powered sawmills similar to Sutter’s were erected literally overnight.

In what is now Plumas County, the situation was no different. As can be seen in this 1852 view near Rich Bar, lumber was used in the construction of a combination bridge and water flume across the river, a waterwheel, dam, a pumping operation, and many cabins. The lumber was probably cut at the sawmill located nearby the mouth of aptly named Mill Creek. (The Huntington Library, Western American Collection.)

Sawpits, or bone and muscle mills, were backbreaking operations but could be very profitable, with sawn boards commanding up to $1 per foot. Some miners were so anxious to get lumber