1890: Life and Death on the Log Drive

While cutters and teamsters faced accident and death many times over the winter, come spring, no one was more fearless than the log driver. His fate was often decided by luck, both good and bad, as he navigated raging waters to direct thousands of massive timbers downstream.

"There is scarcely a portage… where you do not meet with wooden crosses… In a prosperous year about ten thousand men are afloat on loose timber, or in frail canoes, and as many as eighty lives have been lost in a single spring… Some of the eddies in high water become whirlpools, tearing a bark canoe into shreds and engulfing every soul in it."
—Thomas C. Keefer, Civil Engineer, 1854

Listen: Henry McGuey tells Rory MacKay about Death on the Log Drive

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