1886 St. Croix River log jam
On June 13, 1886, a log jam developed in the St. Croix River, close to Taylors Falls, Minnesota, and St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. The river was used to transport large quantities of logs from the forests upstream to the sawmills, and log jams disrupted this business. The 1886 jam was described at the time by a local journalist as "the jammedest jam" he had encountered,[1] and was very difficult to clear, with hundreds of men working for six weeks to clear it, eventually using steamboats and dynamite. The jam was also a major tourist attraction, with thousands of spectators every day. After the jam was broken up in July, cleanup work to remove the logs on the river banks continued until September.
Background
After the Wisconsin Territory was established in 1836, large amounts of Native American land were ceded to the United States via the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters. Much of the land was covered in vast pine forests, and logging activities started soon after.[2] This was a winter activity, as the trees were so large that the only way to move them through the forests was by horse-drawn sleds, usually over ice.[3] Teams of lumberjacks cut down trees all winter and collected them by the shores of the St. Croix River and its tributaries. Pine is light and floats well, so the logs could be easily transported downstream by log driving in the river. The logs were marked with the relevant company's timber mark and then released into the river when the snow melted and the water rose in spring.[3] Workers known as "river pigs" guided the logs down the river and kept them moving, especially at difficult places like shallows, rapids or sharp bends.[2] Downstream, the logs were caught in the log boom at the St. Croix Boom Site, where they were sorted by owner, bundled into rafts and then sent to the sawmills.[4]
Causes and start of the 1886 log jam
In the area now covered by
Last week the lumbermen wore a dejected and lost-their-last-friend look, for the water in the rivers was steadily falling and their logs were almost inextricably jammed at Wood river, Kettle river rapids, the mouth of the Namagon and other places. Crews had been discharged, and there seemed little prospect of getting the logs to market for an indefinite time. But it remained for Davidson, the hermit, to strike the key-note for a change to all this, by blowing out the Clam river dam with dynamite. The water from that stream caused a slight rise, and by one of Elias McKean's "most remarkable coincidences", there seemed to be a concert of action by the elements and otherwise. Other dams were opened, heavy rain storms flooded the upper country, and there was immediately a boom in the water of the Saint Croix, and logs went booming along toward the great Stillwater boom. Logs from the "low-water" drives were easily floated off, and came down stream in immense rafts, almost blockading the river as they moved along. Reaching the famous dells of the Saint Croix, their course was interrupted. The channel was too narrow and the current too sluggish to allow their passage in such large bodies, and shortly after midnight, Sunday morning, they "hung-up" and began jamming and piling. Something such a catastrophe has been anticipated, and yet it came unexpectedly, for the men who had been here for weeks, building sheerbooms at the eddies in the dells, and keeping watch to prevent a jam, were asleep in their tents, and their booms were broken, and the formation of the biggest jam ever known commenced before they were aware of it.
— Stillwater Messenger[14]
An estimated 125 to 150 million board feet of pine became stuck in the log jam.[10][15] For comparison, the average annual production of pine in the St. Croix valley between 1870 and 1889 was 241 million board feet.[16]
Clearing the log jam
Smaller log jams could be cleared just by human labor, with river pigs releasing key logs,
Tourist attraction
Log jams were a major disruption to the sawmills: the 57-day 1883 jam in the same area had played a part in causing the bankruptcy of
The end of log jams
To end the threat of log jams disrupting the industry, lumbermen organized to construct a dam. In 1890,
References
- ISBN 978-0-299-23423-2. Archivedfrom the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
- ^ a b Thorson, Dave (June 12, 2014). "Jams, Dams, Pines and Pigs: Reflections on the St. Croix Logging Era". St. Croix 360. Archived from the original on September 28, 2019. Retrieved October 12, 2019.
- ^ a b Risjord, Norman K. (1999–2000). "Ten events that shaped Wisconsin's history". In Barish, Lawrence S.; Meloy, Patricia E. (eds.). Wisconsin Blue Book. pp. 128–132. Archived from the original on August 21, 2020. Retrieved October 12, 2019.
- ^ S2CID 181152219.
- ^ ISBN 978-5-04-085230-7. Archivedfrom the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
- ^ Chapin, Earl V. (1973). Earl Chapin's Tales of Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin, River Falls Press. Archived from the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
- ^ "Notes gathered in the prison city on a Sabbath day". St. Paul daily globe. July 19, 1886. p. 5. Archived from the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
- ^ "The first park ever to be shared between two states? Minnesota and Wisconsin's own Interstate State Park". MinnPost. August 16, 2016. Archived from the original on September 28, 2019. Retrieved October 19, 2019.
- ^ a b "The Jam at Taylor's Falls". The Minneapolis Tribune. June 19, 1886. p. 5. Archived from the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved December 2, 2019.
- ^ ISBN 9781536507393. Archivedfrom the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved December 2, 2019. (reprint of Curry, Edna. "The Greatest Logjam Ever". American Forests. 92: 24–25, 48–50.)
- .
- ^ Heggen, Richard (July 20, 2018). Floating Islands: an Activity Book. Richard Heggen.
- ^ "A Big Log Jam on the St. Croix". Mississippi Valley lumberman and manufacturer. Vol. X, no. 46. June 18, 1886. p. 5. Archived from the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
- ^ "The Messenger". Stillwater Messenger. June 19, 1886. p. 4. Retrieved January 15, 2022.
- ISBN 9780299234232. Archivedfrom the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
- ISSN 0169-2046.
- from the original on September 28, 2019. Retrieved December 2, 2019.
- ^ "That Jam". The Minneapolis Tribune. June 16, 1886. p. 1. Archived from the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved January 15, 2022.
- ^ "The Breaking of the Jam". Stillwater Messenger. July 3, 1886. Archived from the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved December 2, 2019.
- ISBN 978-0-87351-141-4.
- ^ "A Mammoth Log Jam". St. Paul Daily Globe. June 16, 1886. Archived from the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
- ^ "The Messenger". Stillwater Messenger. June 26, 1886. p. 4.
- ^ a b c "Saint Croix NSR: Historic Resource Study (Chapter 2)". npshistory.com. Archived from the original on October 5, 2019. Retrieved December 2, 2019.
- ^ Braatz, Rosemarie Vezina. "Nevers Dam . . . The Lumberman's Dam" (PDF). Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 25, 2020. Retrieved December 2, 2019.
External links
- Images of the log jam at the Minnesota Historical Society website