Two Lefevers, time travel pic

[B. Dudley]

With how hard people worked back then, if they did have chainsaws there wouldn't be a tree still standing.

[Elk Hunter]

Originally Posted by Brian Dudley

With how hard people worked back then, if they did have chainsaws there wouldnt be s tree still standing.

The "Woodsman" aka loggers of the early days didn't have chainsaws but they did have crosscut saws also known as misery whips and Swedish violins with which they nearly denuded Minnesota and other parts of the North East of pine trees. My paternal Grandfather left Minnesota in 1906 and came West to Idaho partly because the woods were playing out back there. My folks left Idaho in 1938 and came to Oregon because there was work here. My dad was a "timber faller" as were many of my uncles. I have a WW-2 era picture of my dad and his partner bucking a tree into logs with a crosscut saw, chain saws didn't really get into general use until after the war. By 1950 the woods were playing out here and most of the trees had been cut with crosscut saws.

If there is an upside to the wholesale cutting of the forests it is better habitat for most animals including game birds as most do not live in mature forest but along edges.

Just a bit of history from my point of view.

[OLD GEEZER]

Look at this crew of loggers and you can see some of what they used back in the day. Thomas

[OH Osthaus]

Originally Posted by Brian Dudley

With how hard people worked back then, if they did have chainsaws there wouldn't be a tree still standing.

most people do not realize there hardly was a tree left- by the beginning of the 20th century 2/3 of the forest in the US had been removed -

i have a photograph of Losey Hill from that period - looking down the valley and there is hardly a tree insight, now days it nearly all woodlands.

The Catskills were denuded, a fact bemoaned by the earliest trout conservationists. Log rafts were built on the ice and floated down the Delaware in the spring.

If you go to the Adirondack's museum in Blue Mountain Lake they have a logging exhibit that shows all but the most rugged areas of the mountains cleared-

I would say it was not the lack of power in the saw that left a few stands but instead the difficult terrain that prohibited getting the logs out.

find any old growth in the eastern US and you will see why it was left

[OLD GEEZER]

Frank:Great photo by the way and love those LeFevers