More Humboldt County Logging History

Originally I was going to talk more on the history of the logging industry in general. But, I've decided to write about how that history affects us here at Redwood Burl Inc. today.              As I left off, the invention of the band saw mill enabled loggers to cut tremendous amounts of wood. This required a lot of logging to be done. At first logging was done using axes and whip saws, the lumber was pulled by oxen along the skid trials to a waterway or flume and floated into Humboldt Bay. It was then milled into lumber at one of the many bayside lumber mills.              In the simplest setting, a line-horse carried a cable to the felled timber. The cable was attached to the log. On signal, the steam donkey's engineer would open the regulator, allowing the steam donkey to drag the log towards it. It was then taken either to a mill or to a landing where the log would be shipped by rail or river. If a steam donkey was to be moved, one of its cables was attached to a tree, stump, or other strong anchor. The machine would drag itself overland to the next yarding location.              During this time a lot of places were clear cut. During the process there was some breakage. Most trees were cut by sawyers standing on springboard sometimes 6 or 7 feet off the ground. This resulted in a lot of stumps left behind. Once the trees were cut, they were High Graded. Only the straight grain wood was wanted in the mills, and it produced the best lumber. Any wood with curl through it, or any kind of burls, were left in the woods to rot. Turns out Redwood doesn't rot very well.              Later, due to good Forestry practices, these areas were replanted so that one day they would be able to go back and harvest these areas again.              Next week, I will talk about how all of this enabled us to have the amount of Reclaimed Redwood we have today.