The West Branch Mill of the Sierra Lumber Company: Early Logging in Northeastern California

By Andy Mark

In the late 1800s, the green gold of California's inland timber belt included the long-coned sugar pine and cinnamon-dusted ponderosa pine of Big Chico Creek Canyon. Tucked into the steep terrain of present-day Butte and Tehama Counties, the bustling West Branch Mill logging operations moved timber from the foothills east of Chico to waiting markets in Sacramento, Marysville and San Francisco. Local author Andy Mark recounts the lesser-known history of the West Branch Mill, recalling a time when resident physician Newton T. Enloe treated the daring men who faced daily peril, John Bidwell's bumpy and sometimes treacherous Humboldt Wagon Road was essentially the only route to town and Big Chico Creek was lined with an elevated flume running lumber and ambulance rafts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Oct 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781614237297

Andy Mark

Andy Mark worked as a brakeman and conductor on the Western Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads for twenty-one years before going back to college. A graduate of CSU-Chico, he spent sixteen years as a statistical consultant and data analyst before retiring in 2013. He is the author of two published articles, as well as a book on local history titled The West Branch Mill of the Sierra Lumber Company. Andy enjoys hiking in the backcountry, and he and his wife, Jill, are longtime rock hounds.

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acknowledge.

INTRODUCTION

Hidden below the steep, rocky walls of Big Chico Creek Canyon, located in the foothills east of Chico, California, lies a story of hardy men who, at the turn of the twentieth century, often risked life and limb to help shape the growing western frontier. Today, this country is mostly inaccessible by vehicle, except to Sierra Pacific Industries and the loggers who still carry on the tradition of harvesting trees to supply a perpetually hungry lumber economy.

Much has been written about logging in California, in general, but the West Branch Mill operations in this canyon have received relatively little attention, except for photographs that have been handed down to descendants of those bygone times, who have, in turn, made them available to the public. The lack of detailed information about the mill is somewhat surprising, however, considering that at one time, it was reported that the lumber company paid out more money for labor than any other industry in Butte County, primarily because of the West Branch Mill.

I spend quite a bit of my leisure time mountain biking and hiking in the canyon. Since I have an interest in local history, it was just a matter of time before I wanted to know more about this large mill built along the creek that operated over one hundred years ago. Fortunately, Butte County historians W.H. Hutchinson and John Nopel gave me a starting point, and I took it from there. I felt the only way to get unique stories about this place was to literally go back in time by reading what the newspapers then had to say about it. These news clippings that I collected from countless hours of scanning through microfilm make up the bulk of my resource materials.

This book focuses on the West Branch Mill but begins with logging in northeastern California in general in the years prior to the canyon lumber operations. It ends with the national concern over forest devastation that resulted from uninhibited logging practices that actually began in the eastern states but rapidly spread westward.

The stories in between are not just about the mill, although they are always related to it in some way or another. For instance, the valley town of Chico is well represented. The rough-cut lumber from the mill was sent down a twenty-five-mile-long flume to the Chico factory, which specialized in fruit box and tray stock and more. Injured loggers were sometimes sent in makeshift boats down this same waterway in order to receive the best medical attention in the valley. There was essentially only one way to get to the mill from the valley, and that was on the Humboldt Wagon Road, whose hard, bumpy surface, especially at the beginning of the foothills, made for an exhausting trip on the stage.

There are plenty of engaging people in the book. Perhaps the most well known MD in northern California history, Dr. Newton T. Enloe, began his California practice as the resident physician for this mill. I hope to show that some lesser-known individuals, such as mill superintendents Barney Cussick and Frank Thatcher, were also heroes in their own right. John Bidwell, Chico’s founder and principal landowner, plays a significant role in this book too.

Sit back and relax. Read how the West was won from a vegetative viewpoint. The jackies were a lively bunch, and you’ll have a whole new perspective on what it was like to live in the foothills of northeastern California at the turn of the twentieth century.

CHAPTER 1

BEFORE THE WEST BRANCH MILL

Before the gold rush, there was only a sprinkling of lumber mills scattered about what is now known as northeastern California. However, after massive numbers of settlers started pouring into the new territory looking to make fortunes mining for the bright yellow mineral, mountains rich in another resource provided the newcomers with an alternative way to become wealthy. The material was called timber and was often referred to as green gold.

Many of the people who failed to make their fortunes in mining, along with others who never prospected, chose other occupations that became available—like ranching, farming, logging and selling mercantile, to name just a few. Mining camps, logging camps, homesteads and towns were springing up everywhere, and wherever people settled, the demand for lumber increased correspondingly. The timber for building was readily available for local consumption, and small lumber mills were quickly erected to service these nearby places. However, selling lumber to the larger city markets was simply out of reach because of transportation problems that competing coastal mills, which took advantage of conveniently located major waterways, such as the Pacific Ocean, did not have to contend with. In northeastern California, use of the Sacramento River to transport lumber met only limited success due to its meandering and unpredictable nature.

During the very early years, timber operations in the upper foothills and lower mountains east of Chico and Red Bluff,¹ located in the northeastern portion of the Sacramento Valley, were mostly dependent upon the forces of gravity and animal power to move the wood from place to place. After the hardworking fallers undermined a tree’s natural ability to stay upright, gravity was responsible for getting it to the ground. The tree was then limbed and bucked into desirable lengths. Oxen or horse teams would then drag, referred to as yard, the fallen timber to the next destination, generally a log landing. If the terrain was suitable for it, logs were strung together and dragged by the animal teams to be placed in log chutes, some of which allowed the downward forces of nature to once more make it easier to transport the fallen timber to a landing.

The chutes were simple in design. They were just long troughs, with sides made up of peeled tree trunks placed end to end, often supported at regular intervals by notched cross logs. Animals and, later, steam power were used to pull strings of logs along the chutes, which provided a smoother surface to slide the cut timber than soft or uneven ground, especially when the trough was lubricated with grease or water at locations where the logs might have a tendency to get stuck. (The cable was attached to the rear of the log train, so the transported timber was actually being pushed.) However, in gravity chutes, also referred to as running chutes, logs rushed down precipitous slides at frighteningly high speeds, often crashing into others at the bottom of the incline. The steep topography of Big Chico Creek Canyon, located in California’s northern part of Butte County and southern part of Tehama County, in the foothills northeast of Chico, was ideal for utilizing gravity chutes in the woods.

Sketch of a gravity chute in Big Chico Creek Canyon. Drawn by Will L. Taylor, circa 1877. Courtesy of CSU, Chico, Meriam Library, Special Collections. Donated by W.H. Hutchinson. Permission to reproduce granted by the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California.

From the landing, the logs were often loaded onto trucks that rode on tramways. A tramway was a light railway, consisting of either sawn timber or steel rails secured to cross planks or ties. These, in turn, were mounted on stringers that often rested on a cribbing designed to maintain a constant grade. To prevent wear, strap iron was frequently placed on the wooden rails. Again, bovines or equines provided the power to move the lumber along the tramways to a nearby mill. From the mills, animals hauled lumber wagons to market, typically in the valley, often over steep and rough roads.

As reliable as they were, hauling with oxen or horses (or sometimes mules) was slow. Since time is money, transporting lumber this way was relatively expensive. Eventually, however, new technological advancements were made available to the lumbermen in the mountains of northeastern California that allowed the mills located within the vast stands of valuable sugar and ponderosa pine to compete with their coastal counterparts in the timber industry.

Sketch of logs being roaded on tramway to Belmont Mill, near the headwaters of Big Chico Creek. Drawn by Will L. Taylor, circa 1877. Courtesy of CSU, Chico, Meriam Library, Special Collections. Donated by W.H. Hutchinson. Permission to reproduce granted by the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California.

The first major boost for the lumber industry working in the foothills east of the upper Sacramento Valley was the California and Oregon Railroad, which came to Chico in the year 1870 and then continued its northbound journey up to Redding, arriving there in 1872. With this advancement, at least the mills located in the timber belt east of Chico and Red Bluff could get their products to the larger markets of Marysville, Sacramento and San Francisco once they arrived in the valley.

However, there was still that problem of getting the lumber down to the valley in a more economical way than with teams of slow, plodding beasts pulling wagons weighted down with stacks of lumber. Eventually, a man named C.F. Ellsworth, who was also known for constructing the first logging tramway in the northern Sierra, introduced the lumbermen east of Chico and Red Bluff to a technological innovation that revolutionized lumber transportation in this part of the country—the V-flume. This kind of waterway was first successfully used by a man called J.W. Haines to transport lumber from the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada down to Carson City, Nevada, to be used in silver mines, after the silver strikes of 1859.

The V-flume was typically built to be about sixteen inches wide at the bottom, forty-eight inches across at water level and have thirty-two-inch sloping sides. This kind of transport system was an improvement over its square-box predecessor because not only did it require less lumber to build and less water to operate, but also in the event that floating planks would start to jam, water would back up so that the lumber would be lifted into the expanded upper section of the waterway and be freed to move on. That is, it was self-clearing, although not always.

Therefore, flume tender stations were located at various points along the flume. The stations were living quarters for the tenders and their families, if they had one. The flume tender’s job was to repair the flume when necessary and to clear any jams that could not be freed naturally, often using a long-handled tool called a pick-a-roon that was designed to hook or stick into wood. The flume attendant was on constant watch to detect jams and had to be ready to respond immediately. For nighttime vigilance, a common practice was to hang a tin can from a rope to make sure the lumber was still moving along. If the can stopped rattling, it was the lumber herder’s job to make his way along the narrow catwalks that ran alongside the waterway and fix the problem. Needless to say, this was an occupation fraught with perils, as the walkways were often wet or icy, and in many places, they were close to one hundred feet high.

Lumber jam on V-flume, location unknown. Courtesy of Tehama County Library, Red Bluff. Donated by Glenn Dietz, from Coyle Turner collection.

Flume tender and possibly his wife at one of the stations in Big Chico