Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York Volume 85 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ...lumbering or getting out logs for sawmills. Very small trees as well as the large ones are cut, and when down are sawed into short lengths only four feet long, making the work of skidding, hauling, and river driving much easier. At first only the small trees were cut for pulpwood, the large timber being reserved for the sawmills and cut into logs of the usual length. But as the demand for woodpulp increased, the stumpage became more valuable for that purpose; all the spruce timber, both large and small, was cut. The largest spruce tree in the Adirondacks so far as known (41 inches in diameter on the stump) was cut for pulpwood, the shaft having being sawed into 22 short logs, each four feet long. On some of the pulp jobs the timber is peeled in the woods before shipment. in order to save freight. The bark has no commercial value and is left in the woods where the peeling or "rossing" is done, the mass of dry bark strippings, which covers the ground thickly in places, increasing greatly the danger from fire. Much of the pulp timber in the Adirondacks is hauled direct to some railway station, and from there shipped to the mills, as under present market prices it will bear transportation a long distance. In other places the short pulp logs are driven down some stream and thence into a lake or pond near a railroad, where, by means of jack-works or conveyers, the sticks are lifted from the water and loaded on cars. In other localities a long haul by teams is avoided by the construction of water slides or wooden troughs, several miles in length, through which a shallow stream of water carries the sticks to the railroad, or to some river whence they are driven to the pulp mills, in the same manner as in a log drive. In the vicinity of...