An unidentified logging camp with trees and tree stumps. This image is by Arthur Adams, Minneapolis high school teacher, local historian, and photographer. Adams traveled throughout Minnesota, taking photographs to augment his lectures. His studio was located at 3648 Lyndale Avenue South in Minneapolis.
A view of a log jam on the Little Fork River. The river is so full of cut logs that that the water is barely visible. A thick forest grows on both sides of the river.
Log jam caused by the Eastman Crib, the jam is below the Minneapolis Western railroad bridge; the Gasworks is on the river bluff and the University of Minnesota is in the distance.
View of a log jam caused by the Eastman Crib taken from the east end of the Tenth Avenue Bridge; also shows the Gasworks on the opposite bluff and the Minneapolis Western railroad bridge.
A log jam in the St. Croix River near Taylor's Falls, Minnesota. This image is by Arthur Adams, Minneapolis high school teacher, local historian, and photographer. Adams traveled throughout Minnesota, taking photographs to augment his lectures. His studio was located at 3648 Lyndale Avenue South in Minneapolis.
Logs were shipped by rail from northern Minnesota to Stillwater and made into rafts. They were then floated down the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers. The rafts usually consisted of 8 to 10 strings of logs fastened side by side, each string measuring 16 across and about 400 feet long. Some of these enormous rafts stretched 4 or 5 acres in size.
Lumber was rafted downstream from Stillwater. Boards were arranged in cribs or heavy crates, each 16 feet wide and 32 feet long. A lumber raft might contain as many as 200 cribs.
At the boom, floating timbers chained between piers caught and contained logs for sorting and measuring and rigging into rafts. At one time, the Stillwater boom extended a distance of 9 miles and employed 400 men to sort, scale and raft timber.