A Rare Look Into the Lives of Lumberjacks 125 Years Ago

Lumberjacks in the old days were hired to clear vast stretches of land, all with minimal equipment as compared to today’s workers. These bands of men lived together, worked together, and ate their meals (provided by the logging company) together, too. Clearing old growth forests some of these loggers cut down historically large trees. It was dangerous work in hard conditions and this led to a strong sense of camaraderie between the men. It was a business, but it was also a way of life for the loggers, one that history has often forgotten.

The lumberjacks not only had to fell the trees, but they also had to process them and get them shipped as well. Usually in the old days this was done via rivers, as no roads or machines existed at the time that could handle huge loads of lumber.

Machine “donkeys”, burros, horses, and trains were also used as needed, but the process of moving the large tree trunks was arduous and slow, especially over hilly terrain. The logs were skidded down the slopes, leading to the term of a skid road. A Seattle street was named this and it is where we get the term “skid row” from. Logging was often seasonal work, usually done by out-of-towners and itinerants, so in many places the men didn’t have the best of reputations.

In the period of the 1920s-1940s some of the work became mechanized and newly-constructed highways gave loggers the chance to ship via roads for the first time.

The most active years for this type of work were between the 1830s and the 1940s. One interesting thing about lumberjacks is that because they worked in remote areas clearing the way for settlements in rugged terrain the men lived very primitive lives- without the creature comforts that their contemporaries enjoyed. Like miners and homesteaders, this led to a shunning of technology and city life. These were very physical jobs and that fact was celebrated in how the loggers thought of themselves: independent, strong, connected to the land, and versatile in the face of adversity.

Earlier logging camps sometimes had a central hall where food was cooked and where the men refueled after slugging away with axes and saws. In some camps this main hall was also where the men slept, while some camps were composed of a series of smaller buildings. The kitchens might not have had the same equipment as a big kitchen would so skillet meals and simple desserts, not unlike what cowboys ate from the mess wagon, were the foods of choice. However, the food was often much more varied and reliable than what cowboys were fed since logging camps were semi-permanent and the men were not moving each day to a new location.

The bean hole was a hole in the ground with a fire where the dry beans were cooked everyday. Beans were a staple food of the camps, additional to the many other foods they were offered. A good cook was seen as one of the most important workers at the camps because if the food was bad, the men would go to work in a camp with better vittles.

Dishes like sawmill gravy became common in the camps because they were tasty and could feed a lot of folks on a minimal budget. Huge breakfasts that included plenty of yummy carbs like pancakes or hash browns (or both), fried eggs, bacon, and sausage were regulars on the menu. In some diners they even still call these big breakfasts lumberjack specials. Although today they are thought of more as hangover cures than fuel for the hard day ahead.

Lumberjacks would have usually been served 3 hearty meals, with lunch sometimes delivered to them in the woods or carried there in the morning, and if they worked into the night a 4th meal at midnight might have also been served. Tea or coffee would have been served at meals as well.

Some other examples of common loggers’ foods at the time are: sourdough biscuits, molasses cookies, corned beef, stewed prunes, beef smother, salted cod, pork sausage, and a host of sweet desserts like pies, cakes, cookies, and donuts.

A study of mostly French-Canadian lumberjacks in Maine conducted by the USDA and published in 1904 sought to determine what lumberjacks ate and how the food affected their health in the emerging field of nutrition. Based on what was recorded for a one-week period each man in the camps ate between 6,000 and 8,000 calories per day! And when you look at photos it’s clear they burned nearly all those calories up in their rough and tumble line of work.

The study reveals a lot of the other aspects of the lumberjacks’ lives as well. They worked 6 days a week, rising before 5 am to make the 5:15 breakfast time. The men worked from first light to last light, making the most of each day. Some even worked in the snow and if water was used to transport the logs then many men would have been wading through frigid waters to get the logs organized. Breakfast was served at 8 am on Sundays to give everyone a chance to sleep in. For the men Sunday was their only wash day, so they made the most of that, too.

Lumberjacks in the 1800s had to contend with lice, shared housing, primitive outhouses, and a lack of privacy. While housing and food were provided, the men had to clean and repair their own clothing, hanging their sweat-soaked socks to dry by the wood heater each night. Communal sleeping houses were often bunk style, and could be built from unfinished wood. In many camps straw or moss was used to pad out the wooden sleeping bunks.

Early lumber camps were almost entirely men, but later camps had proper cottages and allowed the married men to live there with their wives and children, a big upgrade from how the camps had been operated in the 1800s.

The life of a lumberjack was not easy and it was not a well-paying job despite the hard work and the sacrifices that lumberjacks had to make. For all the dangers involved and the grueling conditions they were paid about $10 a week in the early 1910s, which would be about $316 today.