Log drives
Floating of logs down a river for commercial purposes
19th-century log drive on the Chippewa River in Wisconsin
Log drives involve floating cut wood downstream to collection points. Nineteenth-century log drives could involve hundreds of thousands of cut logs sent in pulses down a channel in connection with construction of railroads or to supply sawmills in connection with widespread timber harvest (see the St. Croix River story map). Essentially, log drives use the river network as a means of transporting logs from the forest in which they are cut to the site where they will be further processed and used for construction.
Cut logs floated downstream to be used for railroad ties, 19th century, Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming
Logs were sent downstream in pulses using temporary dams known as splash dams. A splash dam was constructed to pond water and floating logs and, when full, was commonly destroyed with dynamite with the intent of sending a flood-wave of water and logs rapidly downstream. River corridors used for log drives were also modified to facilitate downstream conveyance of the logs. Obstructions such as large boulders, bedrock outcrops, and naturally occurring large wood were removed from the channel. Banks were stabilized and streamlined. Secondary channels and overbank areas were blocked off to prevent floating logs from becoming trapped in them. The logs themselves behaved rather like a giant scouring brush, damaging or destroying riparian vegetation forests and battering away many of the irregularities along the channel margins that provided diverse habitat. The flood wave from the splash dam also eroded and transported river-bed sediment, leaving some splash-dammed channels in Oregon as bedrock rivers decades after the last splash dam was dynamited. More than a century after log drives ceased in the streams of Wyoming’s Medicine Bow National Forest, channels subject to log drives had less diverse riparian vegetation, fewer and smaller pools, and less naturally occurring instream wood.
Looking downstream at the top of a splash dam and the cut logs piled beside it, 19th century, Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming
Contemporary view of a tie flume (structure used to collect cut logs floated downstream) on the East Fork of the South Tongue River in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming
Contemporary view of a relict tie flume in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming
French Creek in the Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming. This creek was used for log floating in the late 19th-century. Now, more than 100 years later, the creek remains anomalously straight and lacking in aquatic and riparian habitat diversity.
Historic view of a 19th-century tie drive on the Green River in Wyoming
Bibliography
Miller, R.R. 2010. Is the past present? Historical splash-dam mapping and stream disturbance detection in the Oregon Coastal Province. MS thesis, Oregon State University.
Ruffing, C.M., M.D. Daniels, and K.A. Dwire. 2015. Disturbance legacies of historic tie-drives persistently alter geomorphology and large wood characteristics in headwater streams, southeast Wyoming. Geomorphology, 231, 1-14.
Wohl, E. 2014. A legacy of absence: wood removal in US rivers. Progress in Physical Geography, 38, 637-663.
Young, M.K., D. Haire, and M.A. Bozek. 1994. The effect and extent of railroad tie drives in streams of southeastern Wyoming. Western Journal of Applied Forestry, 9, 125-130.
