Transcript Photo Album - Tom Carlson

Early Logging in the
San Juan Valley
•The
•The
•The
•The
Railroad
Camps
Logging
Union
By “Wild”
Click to advance slide
1
The Railroad
 Bear Creek Line
 Harris Creek Line
2
Bear Creek
Camp, camp on
far side of famous
trestle, and parking
on Shawnigan Lake
side of trestle. Later
became the “end of
the Steel”.
In the mid-1930’s, the San Juan Valley attracted another large scale logging operation. Obtaining timber
licenses in the upper reaches of the valley, the Malahat Logging Co. built a railway line from their beach
camp, extending 22 km/13.6 miles to beyond the bear Creek Valley. The line followed much the same
route as the Red Creek Main Line.
Beach Camp, one of two camps built by them, was located where the present Port Renfrew townsite is
today. At the time, the camp had a large shop, a rail line rightaway, an office, a cookhouse, a few
homes and bunkhouses for the boommen and railway crews. The second camp, located on the west
side of Bear Creek housed the fallers, donkey punchers, high riggers, hootenders and chokermen, the
men who worked to get the timber out of the woods, This camp was built in 1938-39 when construction
was started on the Bear Creek Bridge. Standing 242 feet high and spanning 517 feet across, the bridge
was, in those days, the highest wooden trestle in the world.
3
Info from “Hiking through History” taken from internet
Famous Bear Creek Trestle. Later in years when the bridge was showing its age, the train
crew would send someone across the bridge on foot. Then they would send train with
loaded skeleton cars across the bridge unmanned. When it got to other side, they would jump
back on.
4
Heisler No. 8 crossing the trestle
5
The three 26 foot high by 90
foot long creosoted spans were
prefabricated in North Vancouver.
Building the Bear
Creek trestle.
6
Climax crossing Bear Creek Trestle. The last run the train made out of Bear Creek
was in 1957. The train had ended its runs out of Harris Creek 2 years earlier in 1955.
7
Waddy Weeks, Locomotive Eng.
Waddy at controls
8
“Speeders” used for crew transportation to and from work, freight delivery, school bus, and
public transportation between Beach Camp, Bear Creek, and Harris Creek.
9
Building 3-Rivers bridge (built with a curve)
10
Train crossing Three Rivers Bridge, later on when it was decked for truck logging, they built
a “Y” in the bridge (around where the caboose is), swinging off to the pictures left, so it could
11
join up with truck spur heading up the left side of 3-River Valley.
Cathels and Sorenson’s Shay No. 4 on the Granite Creek Trestle. B.C.F.P.
scrapped her in 1959
12
The
Camps
 Bear Creek Camp
 Harris Creek Camp
 Beach Camp
13
Bear Creek
14
Sunday ball game, Malahat Logging Co. (1928)
15
Bear Creek Camp, Malahat Logging, 1936 -1938
16
Bear Creek, Early 1950’s
17
Bear Creek Cookhouse
18
19
Bear Creek Community Hall, in the 1950s
20
Bear Creek school, identical to the one built at
Harris Creek, also taken in the early 1950s
21
Harris Creek
22
Early picture of Harris Creek, note skeleton cars parked on spur. When this
picture was taken, shop was farther down the track to the right, just before the
valley narrowed into the canyon.
23
24
Harris Creek
Camp, picture
taken around 1948
The train logging operations on the north side of the valley were taken over by Matt Hemmingsen, He was
pushing the railroad further, up into the Harris Creek drainage and later began building the upper Harris
Creek Camp. The Camp was completed in 1946 when a large company, the newly-formed BC Forest
Products, bought out most of the area’s timber rights, both railway systems in the valley and camps. They
completed the upper Harris Creek camp and utilized Beach and Bear Creek camps.
25
Main tracks through camp
26
27
Note fence in foreground barely visible above snow
28
Harris Creek in the early 1950s, just after they ripped up the railway. The main road still isn’t established and in
front of the houses (by river) you can still see stacks of railway ties that had been pulled up. Where the road
crosses the river, the bridge is now gone, but a swinging foot bridge is there, which was build recently as a safety
route for the “LongLine” crew who were working at the top of the mountain.
29
Cookhouse Staff (Harris Creek), Lars Lovbakke in center at rear.
30
Community Hall
31
Harris Creek kids (Bobby Laurient, Gordon Laurient, Virginia Smith. They were the children
of Louie Laurient( mechanic), Bert Smith (Slackline Operator and Union rep.)) Watching a game
of horseshoes beside the 20 man bunkhouse. All the other bunkhouses were 8 man (4 men on one
side and 4 men on the other separated by a drying room where the woodstove was located. As
usual the fallers (King of the Woods) were housed in the best bunkhouse (20 man).
32
Swimming Hole, Lars Lovbakke center with legs in water
33
Beach Camp
34
1954
Port Renfrew Superior School
Back Row: Jim Hagen (2nd from left, still working as Grader Operator for Munns Lumber),
Dave Thompson (directly in front of teacher, became foreman for Timberwest), Kenny Jones
(2nd from right, became Dry Land Sort foreman for Timberwest), Front Row: Jill
Moxness (3rd from right, daughter of Blondie Moxness who became Superintendent for B.C.F.P.
35
At Caycuse on Cowichan Lake)
Beach Camp, British Columbia Forest Products, as it looked around 1962
36
The Logging
37
Hay Rack loading with tongs under Wooden Tree
38
Harris Creek re-load, where logs were taken off of trucks and put onto railway cars. Harris Creek houses can be seen
In background.
39
Re-Load shack at Harris Creek. Waddy Weeks (Locomotive Eng), working on Power Saw, Ralph Ross (4 th from left
reading book, and Art Hydes (5th from left).
40
Later, reload was moved to just above Lower Harris Creek bridge.
41
New “Burger” winch mounted on wooden sleigh. Yarder Eng. was Art Wilson, pictured
here with his son, Bruce.
42
Front view of “Burger”, Art Wilson at controls. Newest High-Lead machine in camp. Notice tin
roof and canvas sides. Also the best in seats, wooden block mounted on steal post. Not much for
protection!
43
Yarder parked in Harris Creek waiting to be put on “skeleton car” to be moved
to logging site.
44
Here is Don Wilson, 21 years old, pictured sitting on his 54 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, parked
beside the truck he drives. The year was 1958.
45
46
The Union
 International Woodworkers of America
Local 1-80
Duncan, BC
47
48
49
50
Credits
 Logging as it Was by Wilmer Gold
 Hiking Through History (Teresa
Burton)
 Trails of the San Juan Valley
(info used on slide
3 and slide 25)
 Jim Cameron (Madill
Equipment)
 Pictures on slides 3,18,20,21
were obtained from Jim
Cameron
 Lars Lovbakke (Cook at Harris
Creek and Port Renfrew)




(Three Rivers Bridge, slide 11)
Now You’re Logging by Bus
Griffiths (cartoon frames Slide 11)
Jack Chester’s Walk Through
History (3 pictures of Speeders,
slide 9)
4,000 Years (A History of the
Rainforest) slide 5
BC Lumberworker, International
Woodworkers of America, slides
48-50
 Slides 29-33, 39-41
 Numerous pictures from “Wild’s”
collection.
51