Since the beginning of large-scale lumbering in the 1860s Michiganians have been fascinated by the lumberjack. To help satisfy their craving, photographers traveled to the woods and rivers to record lumbering activities. Their customers quickly snapped  up lumbering stereoviews, postcards, and cabinet photographs offered in galleries around the state. Today, thousands of these photographs still survive and vividly show many aspects of logging life. The photographs on this page are a small offering from the hundreds that are housed in the State Archives of Michigan.
Click on an image to view a larger picture.

During winter, loggers iced over dirt roads and, using massive sleighs pulled by a team of horses, were able to pull huge loads of logs to the river. The logs were then stacked near the river bank and awaited the spring thaw, signaling the beginning of the river drive. This Ontonagan County team piled more than 36,000 board feet of logs on this sleigh in 1893.

Developed by Silas Overpack of Manistee, the "big wheels," as demonstrated in 1922 by these Ostego County loggers, enabled loggers to transport logs during the summer months. The wheels, averaging eleven feet in diameter, enabled a team of horses to pull four logs at a time. The logs' weight was borne by the wheel axle, from which the logs were suspended by a chain.

Following a trip to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition where he saw experimental small railroad engines, Muskegon lumberman Winfield Scott Gerrish returned to Michigan with the idea of using a small gauge railroad system to help his company take logs out of the woods. Gerrish bought a Shay logging locomotive and built six miles of rail line. It was a great success; by 1889 more than eighty-nine logging railroads existed across the state. This innovation allowed logging companies, such as this one in Cadillac, to cut more lumber and log miles away from rivers used during the spring drives.

Stratford's Thayer Lumber Company used this large locomotive to haul multiple flatbed log cars. These logging cars had heavy iron beds with each opposite end turned up to keep logs from rolling off. The logs were held in place by heavy chains fastened to the sides of the car.

Within the first several days of the spring river drive, multiple logging companies released their logs into the same rivers. The result was often huge log jams such as this one in 1883 near downtown Grand Rapids on the Grand River. It took the jam crackers (loggers who used dynamite to free jams) several days to unclog the Grand, but not before it destroyed several of the city's railroad bridges.

At the turn of the twentieth century, mass-produced photographic postcards became a popular way to show logging scenes. This card depicts a vast lumberyard and large sawmill at Menominee. The sawmill was the last stage of the logging process. After logs were floated downriver during the spring drive they were sorted in retention ponds according to the company they belonged to and then sent to their respective sawmills for cutting. It was not uncommon to have as many as six sawmills at a major logging town.

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