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Archival Collections:William H. Carson Papers
This collection consists of miscellaneous source materials that Mr.William H. "Bill" Carson gathered while conducting research on the history of early loghauling equipment. Carson has reported his findings in a number of articlespertaining to the subject that he hopes will be published in future issues ofthe Columbia River & Pacific Northwest Timberbeast. Copies ofCarson's handwritten articles are included in this collection. The bulk of thecollection consists of correspondence from associates and colleaguesknowledgeable about early log hauling equipment and correspondence from numerousarchival institutions, historical societies, and museums that supplied Carsonwith historical information and copies of photographs found in their variousarchival collections. Said photographs are dispersed throughout the collection.These materials are housed in two manuscript boxes. Also included in this collection is one manuscript box holdingiconographic materials pertaining to the Homestake Mining Company's Lumber andTimber Department operations. Materials include photographs and negatives of thecompany's mills, logging sites, and log hauling equipment. The Homestake MiningCompany was founded in the late 1880s. Its home office was in Lead, SouthDakota, and at one time it operated offices in California, New Mexico, SouthDakota, Utah, and Wyoming. Because the company needed lumber for fuel and powerand for wood products used in the mining of gold, it operated lumber mills inSouth Dakota and Wyoming. Custody InformationMr. William H. Carson donated historical materials concerning early log haulingequipment to the Forest History Society in January 1992. Carson donated to theSociety in the 1980s a small number of iconographic materials pertaining to theHomestake Mining Company and early log haulers; those materials were combinedwith his recent gift to create the William H. Carson Collection. The mostcurrent materials are housed in boxes one and two, while the earlier donationcomprises box three. Historical Information on Log Transportation and Log Hauling EquipmentThe transport of logs from the forest tomanufacturers consists of two distinct phases: skidding, or the movement of logsto a collecting site, and the transport of logs from the collecting site tolumber mills. Whereas skidding normally involves transporting logs relativelyshort distances, the movement of logs to the mill usually involves longdistances and a variety of transportation means. Before the mechanization ofAmerican log transportation after the Civil War, whole logs were laboriouslymoved to the landing site via teams of oxen or horses or by floating them downstreams and rivers. In the 1860s loggers began to cut trees into sawlogs in theforest and transport the smaller logs to the landing by sleigh. Experimentationled to the development of wider sleighs that accommodated the sawlogs moreeasily and transported them more efficiently. Increasing mechanization duringthe nineteenth century spurred the construction of railroads to carry logs fromthe landing to the mill. Technology continued to influence log transportation in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1880s Horace Butters, ofLudington, Michigan, patented the first stationary steam skidder. Thissteam-powered traction machine, and others like it, replaced the oxen and horsespreviously used to skid logs to the landing. The steam skidder could move logson land or through the air and was instrumental in loading logs onto railroadlog cars at the collection site. As early as 1868 innovators were experimentingwith the development of steam crawlers. Glover and Chandler built a successfulsteam crawler tractor in 1888 but went bankrupt just one year later. In 1900Alvin O. Lombard of Maine began building a steam-powered log hauler with crawlertreads and skids in front for steering. Lombard continued to manufacture thismachine for almost two decades. In 1907 the Phoenix Manufacturing Company ofWisconsin also began producing a successful steam-powered log hauler. Theseimprovements in log hauling increased the efficiency and productivity of loggingoperations in the United States. In the days before mechanization of log transportation, chutes and flumeswere utilized to connect remote skidding sites with major means oftransportation, such as railroads, which continued to dominate logtransportation from 1900 to 1940. But as increasing mechanization facilitatedthe logging of vast regions of forest land, other means of log hauling wereneeded to provide more efficient and less costly access to remote stands oftimber in mountainous regions. In the late 1910s logging trucks were firstutilized in the forest. Lumber companies began to build truck roads to reachvirgin forest land rather than extend the expensive logging railroads furtherinto the interior. The crawler tractor was another machine used to skid logs andpull them over primitive roads in bad weather. Although there were some twentymodels of the crawler tractor built in this era, the most popular was the"Caterpillar," a registered trade name of the Holt ManufacturingCompany, which later became the Caterpillar Tractor Company. Diesel enginesrather than gasoline engines were used almost exclusively in trucks and tractorsby the 1940s. These and other such improvements in log transportation, coupledwith high costs of logging, provided the foundation for modern logging practicesand allowed small logging companies to compete more easily with large loggingoperations, especially in the 1940s and 1950s. [Historical sketch gleaned from: WilliamG. Rector, "Log Transportation," Encyclopedia of American Forestand Conservation History, Vol. I (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company for the Forest History Society,1983), 354-362.] Processing NoteCollection processed by Michele Justice, FHS Archival Assistant, January-February 1992. Key to ArrangementIn boxes one and two, files are arranged primarily in chronological orderin seven series: 1) MISCELLANEOUS; 2) LOG HAULERS: LINN; 3) LOG HAULERS:LOMBARD; 4) LOG HAULERS: PHOENIX; 5) LOG HAULERS: MISCELLANEOUS; 6) PHOTOGRAPHS;and 7) PUBLISHED MATERIALS. Carson's original arrangement scheme of maintainingseparate files for materials sent by different institutions has not beenchanged. Therefore, files contain information provided by specific individualsor agencies and are thus labeled. The iconographic materials in box three arearranged chronologically in a single series: 8) HOMESTAKE MINING COMPANY. |
Container List Files: Box One
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Files: Box One (continued)
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Files: Box One (continued)
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Files: Box One (continued)
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Miscellaneous Log Haulers Series Files: Box One (continued)
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Files: Box Two
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Files: Box Two (continued)
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Homestake Mining Company Series Files: Box Three
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| http://www.foresthistory.org/Research/Faids/Carson.html Last update: 5 October 2004. (c) Forest History Society, 2004. |
