[gentle music]
- Jenny Pederson: Welcome to today's
"History Sandwiched In" program
at the Wisconsin Historical Society's History Maker Space.
We are excited to have you all with us this afternoon.
For those of you joining us for the first time,
this program runs from-- throughout the year
from March through November, highlighting a range of topics
that are relevant to the history, places,
spaces, and people of Wisconsin and the broader Midwest.
For individuals or groups
who have attended a previous "Sandwiched In" program,
welcome back.
I am very excited to welcome
and introduce our speaker for the day.
My name is Jenny Pederson,
and I am the public programs manager
with the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Again, it is a pleasure to have you all with us.
A note that the opinions expressed today
during the presentation are those of the speaker,
and not those of the Wisconsin Historical Society
or the society's employees.
Now to our main show.
It is an absolute pleasure to introduce Susie Apps-Bodilly,
who is presenting Timber!: A Northwoods Story
of Lumberjacks, Logging, and the Land,
based on her book, co-authored with Jerry Apps.
Before I hand it over,
I am excited to share a brief biography of our presenter.
Susie is a retired educator and writer.
She taught elementary and middle school students
for 34 years.
She holds a bachelor's in elementary education
and a master's in curriculum and instruction.
When she is not reading or writing,
Susie enjoys spending time with her family,
hiking at the family cabin,
kayaking, and trying new recipes with produce from her garden.
In addition to being the co-author of Timber!,
the topic of today's presentation,
Susie is also author of Seeds in Soil:
Planting a Garden and Finding Your Roots,
One Room Schools: Stories from the Days
of 1 Room, 1 Teacher, 8 Grades,
and also a co-author, alongside Jerry Apps,
of Old Farm Country Cookbook.
Please join me in welcoming Susie,
and enjoy the presentation, everyone.
[audience applauds]
- Susan Apps-Bodilly: Okay, thank you so much
for inviting me to speak with you today.
I'm so happy to be here.
Jenny kind of already said this,
but I will reiterate that all the photos in my presentation
are from my personal collection, or photos
from the Wisconsin Historical Society image collection,
as indicated.
And then, if I used a photo from someplace else,
I did source where I got it from on the slide.
And also, all opinions are my own.
Just a bit of a disclaimer.
In Wisconsin, educators are-- use Wisconsin Act 31
that was put out in 1989.
It's a law mandating public schools
to provide instruction on the history, culture,
and tribal sovereignty of Wisconsin's
recognized American Indian nations.
So, because of that, I always start all of my talks,
no matter where I am in the state,
with a land acknowledgment statement.
So, to start today,
I want to recognize and respect
the inherent sovereignty of the Native nations
within the boundaries of the state of Wisconsin.
And also, I'm so pleased to be here.
This is actually a rescheduling from an event
that I had planned last fall,
so I'm so appreciative to Jenny
for allowing me to come this year instead.
So, I'd like to thank the Wisconsin Historical Society
and also public television.
As Jenny already mentioned,
I was an educator for 34 years in middle school
and elementary school, mostly in Madison at Falk,
which is now Anana Elementary, and Sherman Middle School
and Mendota Elementary on the north side.
I also taught briefly in Princeton, Wisconsin,
and in Ohio.
And today, as Jenny mentioned, I like to kayak.
I like to be outside, I enjoy cooking,
and I do actually a lot of presentations around the state,
which I really enjoy
because I-- still educating people about topics
that are important to me.
I go and speak at several-- I've been to lots of libraries,
historical society groups, any kind of group
that was interested in having a speaker about topics
on any of my books.
I really enjoy getting out and meeting people.
As Jenny mentioned, I wrote a book about one-room schools
that was published by the Historical Society in 2013.
My Seeds in Soil book came out in 2022.
Old Farm Country Cookbook was published in 2017,
which was sort of the inspiration
for the public television film Jerry Apps: Food and Memories.
Has anybody seen that movie?
You can stream it if you haven't seen it.
It's really fun, and I'm cooking in it,
and it really was so much fun
to work with the folks from public television
'cause they were so awesome,
and we actually really enjoyed putting that film together.
So, today, though, we're gonna talk about
Timber!: A Northwoods Story of Lumberjacks,
Logging, and the Land.
My book is-- was written for young readers.
However, I really encourage anyone of any age
to pick up the book and read it yourself,
or find some younger readers to read it with.
My purpose for the book
is to get young readers and families to ask questions.
As an educator, I was always encouraging students to think,
think critically, and use inquiry strategies,
ask questions to find out about the past.
For example, when you pick up this book,
it might help you think,
what was it like to live and work in the woods?
And then what happened
after the forests were cut down in our state?
So, my purpose for the book is to use history
and the past to think about what happened,
and then get kids and families
thinking about how that can be incorporated
into thinking about today.
I definitely grew up loving trees.
The picture, the black-and-white picture is--
I hear you chuckling.
That's me sitting in a tree,
because that's how I spent quite a lot of my summer
at our family cabin.
That's a willow tree that had been hit by lightning,
and there was a branch that fell over.
My dad tied a rope into the tree and a swing,
and my brothers and I, we spent hours
just hanging out in the tree.
So, I was very fond of trees and being outside in general.
At our family cabin in Waushara County,
we have 120 acres, which is part of a managed--
It's a managed tree farm today,
so we do still do spring tree planting every year.
We-- That's my husband and my brother.
We maintain our woods and we try to get rid of invasive species,
maintain the paths, and create a space
that's enjoyable for our family and friends and people
to spend time out in nature.
Today-- Have you ever cut down a tree?
Just raise your hand.
Anybody have experience?
Oh, several people have actually cut down a tree.
[laughs] I don't mean like a backyard tree.
Most people do yard work and that kind of tree cutting,
but to cut down an actual tree,
to use the wood for a wood stove might be something
that you're familiar with, or maybe not.
Does anybody have a relative that you know
worked in a logging camp in the past in Wisconsin?
Okay, you do?
Nice.
We can talk afterwards.
I always am really interested in what people know
as their own family personal history,
because that gives me more information,
and I just love hearing your stories.
All right, let's learn about logging in the past.
I like to start my talks with a definition
about what I consider history is.
This is the definition of history
that's actually in the Historical Society Press book
for fourth graders,
the textbook called Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story.
So, what is history?
"History is the study of the events of the past and people
who lived in the past."
Who tells about the past?
"Historians study the past and explain it through stories.
No one person can describe every event."
And that statement is extremely important to me
and to anybody, really,
it should be, anybody who's studying history,
because you should not take one person's story from the past
without checking multiple sources
and checking those stories against each other
to see if they match or if they're different.
People encounter history from different perspectives
and different personal biases,
and that's something you need to consider
when you're taking a look at history.
How do we tell about the past?
Historians ask questions,
and then they need evidence to answer the questions.
Basically, you can't just make it up.
Historians ask themselves then,
does this piece of information matter and why?
In the history textbook that students use--
and I actually did use it also with second graders.
It's not just for fourth grade and above.
There's a sort of a brainstorming chart
that looks like this.
And it has phrases and information
to help kids think about the past.
It's also presented in the book like this,
more of a bar graph, helping students understand
how to think about the past.
So, the green one says "cause and effect."
What were the causes of past events
and what were the effects?
The orangish one is "change and continuity."
This one's really interesting to think about,
even with young kids,
because you can talk about what has changed fairly easily
because things change quickly.
Things-- How do you use a phone?
What phones did you use in the past?
What did your grandma use for a phone?
Things have changed
that are noticeable to young students.
And then what is, what has remained the same?
Who has benefited from changes
and who has not benefited and why?
The blue one says "turning points."
How did past decisions or actions affect future choices?
The purple one says "using the past."
How does the past help us make sense of the present?
And "through their eyes" is the orange one,
which I also taught to students as the idea
of putting yourself in someone else's shoes.
How did they-- How did people in the past view their world?
And then, how did that inform their choices and actions?
When you're doing research on a topic,
it's important to check secondary sources,
which are things that historians look at
and study questions that people have already explored.
Lucky for me,
my dad, Jerry Apps, had already written a book
about the history of logging,
collecting lots and lots of reference material.
His book is called When the White Pine Was King:
A History of Lumberjacks, Log Drives,
and Sawdust Cities in Wisconsin.
It's written for adults,
and I know they have it in the museum store
'cause I checked it out.
It's also published by the Historical Society Press.
So, it's an example of a secondary source
that I pulled from a lot
to get a general idea of what to put in the young reader's book.
However, my book is quite a bit different
because our audience was different.
We were trying to engage young kids.
Therefore, my book does not have specific information
about logging companies or businesses or things
that young readers maybe wouldn't be interested in.
It's also important, looking at the past,
to check out primary sources,
which are things that were written or made at the time
in the past you are studying, and those are the things
I actually find the most interesting.
For example, diaries, letters, drawings, photos,
actual artifacts.
In my book, I have lots of primary sources
that were reprinted from actual letters from the past,
and in the book, they're little--
that little magnifying glass icon shows the reader
that you're getting an actual primary source.
I'll just read the first part of this.
It's about John,
a lumberjack who worked in Green Bay when he was 16.
It says-- It's December.
It says, "Dear Father and Mother,
"I got your kind and welcome letter the first of December.
"I think you were all expecting a letter.
"I am getting along alright, and I hope you were the same.
"We had a big snowstorm Monday and it lasted all day.
"I have 34 working days in.
"I don't think of coming down for Christmas...
"They're going to start hauling after new years.
The fellow that used to sleep near me jumped"--
which means he quit-- "Monday
and he helped himself to my drawers and a pair of mitts"--
meaning he got his underwear stolen
and his mittens.
"You need not trouble yourself by sending anything down.
I will see that I dress with what I got," and it goes on.
And then in the book, there are some questions
for the young reader to think about after reading the letter.
So, obviously,
the fact that he's not coming home for Christmas
would give a young reader cause, like, that doesn't feel good.
And then the kid that left stole his clothes.
So, interesting things to think about.
So, primary sources, again, show us
how people lived, acted, and felt.
They help us explore the ways our lives are different from
or similar to the way people lived in the past.
Again, it's important to think about
where the source came from, who made it, and why.
Why was it made?
All right, so today's plan for my talk
is I'm gonna give you a short history of Wisconsin
leading up to the logging era, which is brief and incomplete,
but it's important for the context of why the logging era
and the logging boom became so important in Wisconsin.
In general, what was a logging camp?
How were logs transported to the mill,
and how did technology change logging?
What happened after the logging era?
And then, I'm ending my talk with a encouragement
to be someone who cares for trees.
Probably you are, because you are here today.
So, you can look for those little circle colored icons
to sort of know where we are in the talk.
First, a short history of Wisconsin
leading up to the logging era.
So, you probably know about the glacier.
Wisconsin's last glacier produced tundra conditions
that continued from about 26,000 to about 10,000 years ago.
The glaciers moved, scraped, and carried rocks and sand.
They changed the land's elevation as they moved south.
About 10,000 years ago, the weather began to change.
The air got warmer and the glaciers began to melt.
I have lots of visual maps and things
in the book for young readers and families to talk about.
Clearly, this, the key in this map
just shows pines and hardwoods.
Clearly, it's not specific to certain kinds of trees,
but it gives you an idea of where most of the trees
were in Wisconsin,
which clearly becomes important to the northern part
of Wisconsin as the logging boom went on.
Trees began to grow after the glacier.
Some of the first were spruce.
Then, jack pine, red pine, and balsam fir.
Of course, according to origin stories of Native nations,
people have always lived on the land and found home in our land
we now call Wisconsin.
In the 16-- I just moved ahead, like, a whole bunch of years.
In the 1600s, Europeans started to arrive.
They noticed, of course,
that Wisconsin has many lakes and rivers,
and the forests were full of animals,
which led us to a 200-year period of the fur trade.
Explorers came looking for rivers and routes to the west,
which clearly they were looking for trade routes in Asia,
but they are hitting North America instead.
Some came looking for animals such as beaver, mink, and otter.
The fur trade era, then,
specifically is about 1600 into the early 1800s.
Those hats, hats were made from beaver pelts
because they were soft and very waterproof,
and they became very popular in Europe.
Explorers traded blankets and metal cooking pots
for beaver pelts.
Indians also traded wild rice, maple sugar, fish,
and informaton about waterways.
So many pelts were wanted,
almost all of the beavers were killed.
The fur trade era continued for more than 200 years,
controlled by the French, the British, and U.S. governments.
I'm skipping over a couple wars in there, which,
if you're interested in,
of course, you can read more about that.
We come to the 18-- early 1800s,
when thousands of settlers arrived
from the eastern United States and Europe.
They wanted to use land for farming.
And, of course, they needed wood
to build homes, barns, and furniture.
In 1836, Wisconsin became a territory.
The U.S. government signed a treaty
that forced the Menominee people to cede half of their land
and waters.
Here's a really great map.
If you don't know about it already,
you can look it up on a site called Wisconsin First Nations.
It's a tribal lands map showing tribal lands in the 1800s
and present-day Native nations in the little squares.
It's really interesting map to use with students
because it's so visual and explains so well
where our Native nations were prior to tribal treaties.
In 19-- This is a picture of our pond at our land.
In 1837, the U.S. government forced Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe,
and Dakota nations to sign treaties.
This allowed them to take more Native lands.
Of course, you know that the treaties were unfair
to Native nations because they didn't realize
the government would own the land.
It's not how Native nations thought about land use.
In the mid 1800s, populations grew very, very quickly.
By 1846, most of today's southern and eastern counties
were settled, and in 1848, Wisconsin becomes a state.
Well, what's happening to encourage people to live here?
Well, there was a big boon in mining in part of the state.
And, of course, you've heard of the badgers,
which is why we are named the Badgers
because of the early miners that lived in dens or caves
on the side of a hill.
In about 1849, the California Gold Rush began,
so lots of people who had been mining in the state
decided to leave and go to California.
Between 1840 and 1900,
there was lots of farming going on in Wisconsin.
In 1860, it was the year
of the largest wheat harvest in Wisconsin.
However, the wheat farmers did not become loggers
because in the 1860s, there was quite a bit of damage
to the wheat farming, and chinch bugs damaged the wheat.
So, some farmers who really wanted to grow wheat,
they moved west.
The ones that stayed turned to other crops like oats,
hay, corn, potatoes, tobacco,
hops-- for beer, obviously-- and dairy.
Of course, in the middle, late 1860s
was the Civil War also.
So, then brings us to the logging industry.
If you're not mining anymore
and your wheat is not growing anymore
and you have to shift gears,
there became an opportunity to become a lumberjack.
So, between 1840 and the 1900s
were logging years in Wisconsin.
Plus, thousands more settlers were coming.
They needed lumber to build homes, barns, schools, stores.
People, also, people from cities like Chicago and St. Louis
also bought lumber from Wisconsin logging companies.
I just love that log schoolhouse.
It looks like you'd be freezing in there
if you were a one-room schoolteacher
in that log schoolhouse.
Settlers and loggers chose white pines,
which we had in our state.
Very, very tall, beautiful white pines.
Tall, they were tall and straight.
They were easy to cut with hand tools.
It's a soft wood.
They made sturdy walls and floors.
And does anybody know the really huge reason
why they chose white pine?
He did this.
This gentleman did this. [laughs]
I'm assuming you don't mean flying.
They floated.
Yes, they float.
White pine logs float in water.
We have water.
We have white pine, we have water.
This works out beautifully for people
who wanted to log in Wisconsin.
I love this picture too,
'cause those guys don't look very old.
They look young and ready to get to work.
By 1855, logging and milling became important industries.
And by 1871, Wisconsin led the nation in lumber production.
Look at this picture with the giant tree stump.
Huge!
Wisconsin's trees were important to the state's timber industry,
and our state provided lumber for many.
All right, what was a logging camp?
I've done this talk with students,
and when I say the word "camp," they think camp.
You know, like crafts, s'mores, sleepover.
It's not that kind of a camp.
Logging camps were work camps.
It was not for fun.
Work camps in forests
where loggers worked and lived during the winter.
I had students ask me, "Why the winter?"
Well, the frozen ground made it easier to move the logs,
and animals could pull a sled full of logs over the snow
without worrying about mud and water and ruts in the road.
Also, some farmers were available to work in the winter
and there were no insects.
We know about mosquitoes and insects here in the summer,
so in the woods in the winter, there were no insects
that bothered the people or the animals.
Typical buildings in the camp were a bunkhouse,
an outhouse, a cookhouse,
the blacksmith shed, a barn, and a storage shed.
This picture shows a typical setup for an early logging camp.
A timber cruiser would go on ahead and figure out
where a camp could be placed.
And you can see the river in the background there.
It needed to be near water.
And then, later on,
if a camp was going to be more permanent and larger,
they made more permanent structures.
This one, at the beginning,
they were clearly not meant to be lasting a long time.
They were wood with tar paper roofs.
In early logging camps,
most lumberjacks did a variety of jobs,
but as the camps became larger,
each person was assigned to one job,
which helped the camp run smoothly.
These are dish pans at the Rhinelander Pioneer Park
Historical Complex.
The logging crew!
Chopping down trees and cutting them into logs
was dangerous, hard work.
And I love all of these pictures.
If you are interested in finding
and looking at more pictures from logging era,
there are lots of images
on the Wisconsin Historical Society website.
The typical jobs in a camp were the foreman, who was the boss.
He kept order among the lumberjacks.
The cook planned and prepared all the meals,
and the cookee was the cook's assistant,
hauled water and wood, got things ready.
They ate three big meals a day,
and typically they were not allowed to talk
while they were eating because eating was for eating,
and then you had to get back to work.
So, very large amounts of food.
And then, you just ate and you left.
It wasn't a social time.
If you were too far away from camp in the woods,
sometimes the cook and cookee
would bring lunch to you in the woods.
So, you took a little bit of a break,
ate your lunch, and got back to work.
The teamster drove the team of animals that pulled the sleds
and cared for animals.
By the 1850s, horses were used more than oxen,
which were faster and easier to care for.
Of course, the blacksmith then made and repaired tools.
Lots and lots of different tools.
So, if you're talking with younger readers
and thinking about history, sometimes a thing like tools,
thinking about tools from the past versus tools from today,
what has changed, what has stayed the same,
sometimes something like a tool is a hook
to get kids interested in the past.
Interestingly, I've done this talk for kids
and I said "horseshoes,"
and they are picturing shoes like Nikes.
And they're like, they even said to me,
"There's no shoes on that horse."
And I said, "That's not the kind of shoe I'm talking about."
So, I had to put a little picture of a horseshoe
in my slides so that they knew that
a horseshoe was something that protected
and supported the horse's hooves,
not a shoe like you wear today.
So, that's one thing that's definitely changed
as far as kids think about.
The fitter used an ax to chop a notch into the tree.
So, those of you who have chopped down a large tree,
you know about notching a tree.
In theory, the tree will fall toward the notch.
And it's not as easy as you would think
to plan how a tree will fall.
I know that when I have--
We've cut trees for our wood stove at our cabin.
You have to spend considerable amount of time
walking around and looking at the tree
and looking at what's around the tree,
and figuring out how is that tree going to fall
based on how you think it's going to fall.
It's called-- My brother and people
call it "reading" the tree.
Like I said, tools.
Sometimes, kids are really interested in tools.
It's not just for Halloween.
They actually have a purpose.
So, a single bit--
There are names for all of the tools,
and I have had students
that were just interested in knowing names
for every single thing.
So, if you come across a youngster that likes to name
and know names of things,
this is-- the tools from logging are for you.
This is the single-bitt ax, which is for chopping
and splitting wood.
The double-bitt ax, of course,
has two sides that are sharp and one side at least is kept sharp
so you could trade and use the other side.
But, oh, my gosh, that seems dangerous to me
to have two sharp edges like that flying around.
Two lumberjacks held each end of a crosscut saw.
And I like that little diagram
of where the tree is supposed to fall
based on the notch.
They sawed on the side opposite of the notch.
Two people sawing together.
You didn't push; you pulled the saw.
If you pushed a saw, it jams up.
They used axes or saws to remove the limbs
from the trunk of the tree,
and the logs were cut into different lengths based on
what your company sawmill wanted you to cut them to.
Twelve, fourteen, sixteen feet.
The skidder is a verb,
meaning you're skidding the logs to the riverbank,
but it's also the name of the job of the person
who used the skidder,
so that the the sled is hooked to that big log,
and then the horses pull it to the river.
A swamper made the sled tracks in the woods
and cut away brush for the skidders,
and the logs were very carefully stacked onto a sled.
And I've had students who are extremely fascinated by
how that could possibly work,
'cause clearly, you can't lift those logs with manpower.
You're doing a pulley system and a certain amount of physics
to figure out how to get those logs up on the sled.
This picture, my dad and I collaborated on
pictures and images for the book,
and he said, "That's not a real picture."
And I said, "It's a photograph."
And he said, "They wouldn't have done that."
He thinks, in his opinion,
they wouldn't have stacked a sled that high
and then climbed on top of it and rode to the river.
He said, "It's just too dangerous."
So, he is thinking that a photographer went from camp
to camp to camp and took pictures.
So, what my dad said is this is a show-off picture,
that they were trying to show off how capable they were
and how much they could pile on the top without it falling off,
but that's probably not how they took the load to the river.
At the river, the log scaler
recorded the quantity and quality
of every single log.
How did you mark the logs came from your camp?
Well, the blacksmith made an implement, a tool,
that pounded the letters into the end of each log
in several places.
The letters represent the camp where the log was cut.
The company owner only received money for the logs
that made it to the sawmill.
Lumberjacks cut as many trees as they could during a winter.
It was exhausting work.
Were there any women in camp?
Sometimes.
Sometimes, there were women and children in camp,
if they were a family of, say, the foreman or the blacksmith.
In general, there were-- someone just asked me last week,
"Were there any woman lumberjacks?"
And I have not found evidence that there were.
You might know differently, but I don't think so.
I do have in the book a nice primary source story
about a woman who was hired to be in a camp
as, in the kitchen, working in the kitchen,
organizing all the materials for the kitchen,
and she had a baby there with her all winter.
So, that's really fun to read about.
They did have a day off, just one, on Sunday
for reading, letter writing, mending clothes, or laundry.
It was really fun in the evening and on the weekends
to play music, to sing, to tell stories, and have some fun.
One story that is very popular
that came from the logging years was from Eugene Shepard,
who reported that he saw a real hodag.
It was near the town of Rhinelander.
It was a seven-foot-long lizard-like beast,
and it looked about 185 pounds.
The beast had a large head with two horns.
The body was spiked.
It smelled terrible, like a skunk.
And I know that he actually--
It was a complete hoax, obviously.
And he actually tricked people into seeing a hodag
at county fairs
and paying money to see a fake animal
in the, at the county fairs.
Of course, in Rhinelander, at the Chamber of Commerce,
there's a big statue of a hodag there today.
And also, Paul Bunyan.
Paul Bunyan was the greatest lumberjack of all,
of course, in the Midwest.
And in my book,
I have just elements of what makes a tall tale.
I have always found
that kids are really intrigued by any story
that's a tall tale because, of course,
the main characters have superhuman abilities.
It's our own Midwestern superheroes.
They're very tall, very fast, or very strong,
and the main character generally gets help
from an object or an animal.
In Paul's case, it was Babe the ox.
Usually, the tall tale describes an everyday problem,
and the main character can solve the problem in many ways.
There are lots of stories about Paul Bunyan,
like he tied a rope to the end of his ax
and cut 40 acres of pine trees with a single swing,
and he carved the Great Lakes by dragging his ax behind him.
Lots of fun.
I can imagine it would be fun if you were a lumberjack,
and you are very tired,
and you could have somebody do your work for you.
All right, how did the logs travel to the sawmill?
In the spring,
they waited for the rivers to open up.
This is a really cool picture of logs piled
very high on a riverbank.
When spring arrived, the ice and snow melted,
and the logs could now float downstream.
In Wisconsin,
rivers were essential during the early days
of the lumber industry to transport logs to the sawmill.
Moving logs by floating them on a river was called a log drive.
It was sometimes the same men,
but usually a different crew that was hired by a river driver
because they were the most skilled,
the most able to do this work.
The men on the front crew balanced on the logs
on the Peshtigo River in this picture.
And here's another tool.
They used those long pike poles to sort of corral the logs
and make them go the direction they wanted.
I mean, does that look like fun
or does it look incredibly dangerous?
I mean, you decide.
They did wear different clothes.
They wore different clothes than the winter, obviously.
They needed to be clothes that would dry quickly
if they did fall in,
and they had shoes with cleats to help them stay on the logs.
This is a picture of a logger's cleated shoes
on the river drive.
The river pilot was in charge of this special crew
and hired highly-skilled lumberjacks for the log drive.
This picture shows a log drive on the Wisconsin River.
The men worked from very, very early in the morning,
before sunrise, until sunset.
And it was a tourist attraction.
If you lived near a river where there was a log drive,
people came to watch.
So, this was made into a postcard.
It's a log drive on the Brule River
near Florence, Wisconsin.
Of course, they needed to eat, so there was a cook's tent.
And this is a cook's tent on the Wisconsin River in 1913.
There's also a famous wooden wanigan
named the "Dancing Annie," about 1900.
And I do see more women on this river drive.
Was also the river driver's office.
They stored men's sleeping bundles, some clothes.
Here's a member of a crew near the Chippewa River about 1905.
The tool that they're using is a peavey,
which has a pointed end, and it's got that hook.
We still have one at our farm today
that we use for moving logs around.
The rear crew used bateau boats to follow behind the logs
because they didn't want to lose any of the logs.
They wanted as many logs as possible to get to the sawmill.
The bateau boat is a leftover special boat
from the fur trading days.
One of the worst things that could happen on a river drive
was obviously a logjam.
Logs got stuck, and other logs piled up behind them.
If you're wondering, "How could this happen
if they're right there with the logs?"
Well, I imagine it just--
They didn't do it on purpose, obviously,
but there were a few that got jammed up and then,
depending on the current, the weather, who is helping,
they just kept bashing into each other and piling up.
It was a big problem
because it essentially made a dam in the river.
Also a tourist attraction.
So, there are postcards that were made of logjams
and sent out to people.
How did they break up the logjam?
Well, they were walking around on them,
which you can imagine, not too safe.
Sometimes, they tied horses to the logs with a rope.
Larger companies, if they could afford it,
blew it up to get it to move again.
That's expensive because you're blowing up your product
you're trying to get to the sawmill.
Here's a very, kind of a famous massive log jam
on the Saint Croix in 1886.
And at first, you can't even see these people.
But there they are.
I circled them. [laughs]
It's such a massive logjam
that you have to kind of look closely
to see the people walking on there,
trying to figure out what to do.
This is the St. Croix.
Do you see the bridge in the back of this picture?
Here's, I think, the same crook in the St. Croix.
I found another picture with that same bridge,
so you can see why it jammed up.
The logs just didn't make it around the corner there.
The logjam on the St. Croix famously took 200 men,
100 horses, and boats to break it up.
So, the river driver would have had to hire
extra people to unstick the stuck logs.
Here's a logjam near the Black River Falls.
Also a huge mess,
and you can't really see the little person
until you look closely, but there he is,
sitting in the middle of a giant logjam.
They're not moving.
Early sawmills were located near Wisconsin's largest waterways.
I need to tell you that someone came up to me after a talk I did
and said, "Those aren't all the sawmills."
I said, "I know."
I realize we didn't put every sawmill in Wisconsin on the map.
It was just for young readers to identify
that sawmills were generally in certain areas of the state.
And the question you can ask is,
why are there so many sawmills on the Wisconsin River
and on that crook right there
by the Fox River and Lake Winnebago?
Well, the answer, obviously,
to the Wisconsin River question is because it was so crooked
that you couldn't avoid logjams,
and you had to put more sawmills than along the Wisconsin River
because they just couldn't flow through there as well.
After many days or weeks on the river,
the logs reached the sawmill's mill pond.
Which, if you drive around Wisconsin,
there are many, many ponds called mill ponds still
because there was a mill there.
Workers steered logs floating in the Wisconsin River
into the building, in this picture.
They had to work with and against the river current.
So, you needed to know the river.
You needed to understand water and how it worked.
Of course, early sawmills
and mills had been around in Wisconsin.
They used water to capture energy from the river's current.
As the water turned,
it powered smaller wheels and gears in the building.
Rods moved the saws to make board lumber.
Waterwheels in Wisconsin also had been used
to grind grain into flour and grist mill,
and it was very typical
for small, rural communities to have a mill on a mill pond.
If you are, if you know young people who like Legos,
they like building,
and I was talking to my editors about mills and things
and I said, "We need to have
"all of that engineeringish type of thing in this book,
because I know"-- I call 'em Lego kids.
There are kids that are really interested in that.
So, if that's something that hooks them into history,
then I love that.
Here's a picture of men using a circular saw to cut a log.
And my dad said
that he remembers this exact kind of saw
that was available for people to come and use in Wild Rose.
A man stands at each end,
and they work to guide the log across the saw.
But check out how they have no safety equipment.
No-- [laughs]
There's no-- I mean, I think they're wearing gloves,
but otherwise, that doesn't look real safe today.
So, that is one thing that has changed.
Here's another kind of a saw.
It's a circular saw powered by an engine,
when that was available.
Working with saws was very dangerous.
And other issues in the sawmill I have in my book
is there were there were issues of extra sawdust in the waste
and fire danger, and lots of issues in a sawmill in general.
However, we grew as a state.
Villages grew where there was a sawmill.
Many, many towns in the north began as sawmill cities.
This is a picture of Rice Lake Lumber Company after 1872.
Of course, in Oshkosh, the waters of the Fox River
empty into Lake Winnebago at Oshkosh.
This provided the city with power to build lumber,
grist mills, furniture, equipment,
and equipment factories.
Technology did change logging in the late 1800s.
Does anybody have an idea what that technology was?
You can shout it out and I will repeat it.
- Attendee: [speaks indistinctly]
- Susan: Say it again.
- Attendee: Trains. - Susan: A train, yes!
What kind of train?
Well, it was a steam train.
Steam power was the big change in technology in the late 1800s.
You're exactly right.
Steam...
Steamboats and steam trains really changed everything.
Logging comp-- I love this picture of--
this postcard on the Mississippi.
Logging companies began using steamboats
to push huge rafts of lumber.
So, picture the Mississippi and where that's going.
It's going south, right, even to St. Louis.
People also traveled by steamboat, of course.
By the early 1910s,
trains made their way into the Northwoods.
Now, this is the big difference, the cause and the effect.
What was the effect of trains coming?
Logging camps did not need to be located near water.
Larger logging companies, if they could afford it,
no longer used a river drive to transport their logs.
Logs could now be moved by train.
Trees could be cut any time of year, not just winter.
So, you can imagine how that increased
all their work and hiring and all sorts of effects.
Logging companies cut hardwoods
such as oak and maple, which would not float,
and this wood became in high demand.
So, as a result of all of this--
I love this picture because it speaks volumes.
Between 1870 to 1890
were the peak logging years in Wisconsin.
Logging companies provided lumber for homes,
furniture, tools, anything made of wood.
The industry provided many, many jobs in the forests
and in the mills.
Many towns and cities grew
while the logging industry was booming.
Logging also supported other businesses that made shingles,
barrels, wagons, and furniture.
But what happened next?
The land in the north was bare and full of stumps
because logging companies logged and they moved out.
They mostly didn't care about going back in and cleaning up,
because they were moving to the next space to cut trees.
Acres of land were covered with slash
or left behind brush and branches.
And slash is, of course,
if you remember that picture of the really,
really tall pine tree, at the very top where the branches are,
that's where the knots on the trunk are.
So, they would just cut those branches off
and leave them as slash in the woods.
The land in the north became known as the Cutover.
Why is that a problem?
Well, trees are important.
Tree roots help keep soil in place, and with fewer trees,
the land was no longer protected from erosion.
Without trees, the top layer of soil, the topsoil,
washed and blew away,
and the land in general became very, very dry.
Specifically, on October 8, 1871.
You might know this date because it was the date
of the Peshtigo fire,
which started because they were trying to clean up slash
and burning it, and the fire,
it was a trifecta of weather conditions and heat
and the small fire turning into a giant fire.
The fire could not be stopped.
The fire burned more than 1 million acres of forest,
and many, many people died.
Coincidentally, it was the same day as the Great Chicago Fire.
So, in Peshtigo, people did not come
to help as quickly because lots of help and aid
were going to Chicago to help people
after the Great Chicago Fire, which was the same day.
The Great Chicago Fire, however,
proved a boon to Oshkosh's lumber trade,
as much of the lumber used to rebuild the city of Chicago
came from Oshkosh mills.
By 1873, 24 sawmills, 15 shingle mills,
and seven sash and door factories
were in operation, earning Oshkosh the name "Sawdust City."
There's a picture of the Paine Center,
who is a very fancy stone house built by Nathan Paine,
who was a lumber company owner in Oshkosh.
In the north, the logging boom was over.
Some mills tried to switch to pulp and paper,
and people were encouraged to try to farm this cutover land.
This picture is really funny
'cause clearly a cabbage is not that big.
But the state did produce promotional photographs and ads
even to, you know, people in Europe coming--
"Come and get this land.
"Come and farm on this land in northern Wisconsin
called the Cutover."
So people did, they came.
However, removing all those giant stumps was not easy.
Folks from the UW Extension
were up there trying to help people remove the stumps,
and sometimes they, again, just blew 'em up.
Here's a picture of a man using a tractor
to remove a stump from cutover land.
And sometimes, they just plowed around the stumps
and tried to farm and left the stumps there.
In the early 1900s,
many decision-makers continued to promote the idea of farming.
Some people believe the land's just gonna restore itself.
It's gonna self-seed, the trees will come back.
By 1904, there were people in Wisconsin who said,
"That's not gonna work."
They developed a forestry law and passed a law
that helped the cutover lands.
For example, the law created a state department of forestry,
a system of state forests,
a forest reserve, including 62,000 acres of land
in Oneida, Vilas, and Iron counties.
They hired a state forester to oversee this process.
In 1911, work began at the new,
state-supported Trout Lake Tree Nursery.
Young pines-- But, however,
young pines, they need at least two years to grow
before you can transplant them, so it was gonna take a while.
Many people did try farming the cutover lands.
However, the soil was too poor
and the growing season too short.
Decision-makers continued to disagree
about what to do with the land.
You could probably infer that there is more to this story.
It has to do with taxes and who was in government at the time,
and did they have personal interest in logging companies?
And there was a lot more to that,
this small statement.
After some delays, by the mid 1920s,
a majority of voters in Wisconsin
said reforestation should be made legal.
Plans for reforestation of the Cutover continued.
And by 1932, the Griffith Tree Nursery opened,
which also helped provide trees for reforestation.
Also, in the '30s, of course, was the Great Depression.
Jerry Apps has also written a really fine book
about the Civilian Conservation Corps,
which talks about all of the work they did
to replant trees and take care of our newly-formed state parks,
provide conditions in forest that improved,
also managed fire danger,
and created those tall fire towers
that we see today in state parks.
The CCC, during 1935 to 1942,
hired young men to revitalize our forests.
In many of our state parks today,
you can see signs that show
that something was built by the Wisconsin Conservation Corps.
Last summer, I took this giant Brady's Bluff hike,
and we went to the top, where they have a shelter house
made by the CCC guys.
We are so lucky in our state
that we have state and national forest land
that's open to the public.
So, I really encourage, if you have young friends
or anybody in your family to get out and go in the woods.
How are our forests managed in our state?
There are different tree cutting plans.
The state parks and the Wisconsin state forests
are different.
The state forests have active forest management,
including timber sales.
The state parks focus on protecting natural resources
for public enjoyment and have limited harvesting of trees.
Today, many people enjoy the Northwoods of Wisconsin
for tourism opportunities.
The future of forests.
Obviously, I wrote this book
because I want young people and their families to value trees.
That's my husband and I walking in Door County.
Why should we care about trees?
Trees help us-- In its basic level,
trees help make us healthy.
They provide homes for wildlife.
You can have fun out in nature in the woods.
And they're just beautiful.
The end of my book really encourages you to be someone
who cares for trees.
If this is a way to encourage young readers
to think about being out in nature
and taking care of it,
you can teach them about natural resources,
which is covered in school.
But sometimes, kids don't understand
what natural resources are,
and they think water, air, plants
are just there for us to use.
But obviously, we need to care for things
that are valuable to us.
It's important to think about how our use of natural resources
has changed over time.
For example, this logging camp in the picture,
on the image, it said it was near Black River Falls.
Today, the Black River State Forest is nearby.
You can enjoy nature where loggers once worked.
Over the years, people have used our state's natural resources
to make a living.
There's nothing wrong with making a living in Wisconsin.
Miners, farmers, and loggers all played their part
in the early growth of Wisconsin.
Technology improved as well.
It changed the way that people worked with
and transported natural resources.
It also changed the kind of products that were made.
Learning how people used natural resources in the past
helps you understand the choices people make today.
That's my husband and my daughter
and our grandchildren
walking in a park near our house, actually.
It's important to talk with kids
about taking care of the land
because the landscape we have today,
I consider it a living feature of our heritage.
They provide us with evidence
of how people have interacted with the land over time,
and people will value spaces that are important to them
and that you know how to take care of.
So, where can you learn how to take care of trees?
Well, here in Madison, you can go to the Arboretum.
I was there one time recently,
and there was just a really simple exhibit that said,
"Build a nest.
"Pretend you're a bird,
and build a nest with materials at this table."
And there's also a really great exhibit called "Ask a Ranger!"
And there were questions that were posted
and reprinted on the board.
And Rossy said, "Why do I feel so happy
around flowers and trees?"
And the ranger answered,
"Flowers and trees are extremely beautiful.
"It's hard not to feel so happy.
"Scientifically, being out in nature
"is so good for your health.
"There are lots of studies that say
"being around plants releases
"feel-good brain chemicals and reduces stress.
Humans have a deep connection with plants."
In my book, I have a checklist
for how you can be a steward for the trees
and be someone that cares for trees.
How can you learn more about logging from the past?
In the book also are a few-- lots of pages, actually,
about other books that you could read,
websites, educational resources, other outdoor places to explore,
and places to visit.
This past summer, I went way up to Rice Lake
and went to the Luck Library and Museum.
Even small historical societies all around the state,
every one I've been to has some little exhibit
that has to do with logging,
because it's an important part of our history,
and it's something that connects us
as people living in Wisconsin.
At Luck, they had a really cool board scale and explained,
there's that scale that the scale person used
to measure the boards on the river
and explained that a board foot measured 12 by 12 inches
by one inch thick.
Lots of historical societies have these little models
that sort of show how it looked when you were logging,
little-- and beautifully made.
Just, somebody spent a lot of time
making a really nice display.
I went to Marinette this past summer.
They also have a beautiful logging museum
with a whole giant diorama encased in glass
where you can get a feel for what it was like
in a logging camp in the winter.
They have examples of marks on trees
and the companies local to that area,
and what their logging marks were.
The Marinette museum also has a huge room with huge machines
that show what might have been in a sawmill.
For example, this is the edger table,
positioning a board for cutting.
I also went to the Peshtigo museum,
which is extremely interesting.
If you haven't been there, you should go.
It's got so much stuff in it and I just, we enjoyed it so much.
It's right next to the cemetery,
and I feel like it really honors the people
that died as part of the Peshtigo fire.
For some reason, I'm super intrigued by these shoes.
I just realized I have lots of pictures
of river drive shoes in my talk.
These were handmade boots
that somebody made in order to be a river--
a river drive logger.
Also were lots more at the Peshtigo museum.
Lots of tools,
so you can go ahead and look at those tools
that were made at the time of logging.
In Wausau,
at the Marathon County Historical Society,
there's information about industry from Wausau that--
and the bottom picture that shows--
It's a model of a giant raft that floated wood.
Again, boots with spikes.
And kids today, they might be familiar
with soccer cleats or football cleats or something,
and you can talk about what the cleats did.
It's another way to connect with history.
The picture on the left is myself and my brother
staring at a tree. [laughs]
I think we were probably picking out a Christmas tree.
But it just shows proof that even in the past,
I've spent a lot of time thinking and looking at trees.
The picture on the top right is my kids and my brother's kids.
We were kind of fooling around
in the Rhinelander Logging Museum,
where they have a kitchen, eating area set up,
and we just had a lot of fun at that museum.
Thank you for listening to my talk about logging in the past,
and I would love for you to continue working
with young people to encourage them to care for trees
and our forest lands.
This particular picture is--
I gotta give my brother, Steve Apps, a plug.
He used to be a photographer for the State Journal,
and he was also the Packer photographer.
He's got a beautiful website with lots and lots of pictures.
Here are my books.
My, that's my email that got squished up there.
susanappsbodilly@gmail.com.
And I am a member
of the wisconsinhistory.org Speaker's Bureau.
And that's how you can get ahold of me
if you'd like to do a talk for your group on any of my books.
All right.
Any questions or comments about the history of logging
or taking care of trees?
And that's the end of my talk, yeah. [laughs]
[audience applauds]