The clearwater drives began in 1928 and continued
through 1971.
They were first organized by the Clearwater Timber Corporation, a predecessor
of the present-day Potlatch Forests Incorporated.
In forty-three years,
almost two billion board feet of timber was floated down the north fork of the
Clearwater to mills in Lewiston, Idaho.
The drives along the north fork
and main Clearwater River
took anywhere from five to eighty days depending on the spring runoff and the
distance which ranged between sixty
and one hundred miles.
The construction of the Dworshak Dam on the Clearwater River in 1971
ended the whitewater log drives
was the last great river drive
in the west.
In the early years of the Clearwater River log drives, there were few
machines to help
with the heavy wood.
Loggers depended on the forces of water and gravity to move
logs from the upper reaches of the drainage
to the mills.
High in the mountains shutes and flumes were used to carry logs from the
mountainsides to the rivers.
Shutes are dried troughs made by placing two logs next to each other
or simply goughes in snow and ice or occasionally
bare earth.
Log shutes without enough inclination
had to be greased to help the logs slide. When shutes traversed long relatively
flat stretches of ground
horse trails were often built alongside the shute so horses could tow a string
of logs through these sections.
A running shute operated entirely by gravity
carrying logs down steep mountainsides at dizzying speeds
to pile up on a landing or plunge into a body of water at the bottom.
To reduce the speed of dangerous logs that could jump the shute,
men were often stationed along steep pitches to shovel dirt on the shute.
Flumes were wooden feed-bottomed
troughs carrying running water.
They were fed by splash dams located high in the tributary streams.
Some flumes covered up to fifty miles.
The logs were skidded by tractors and decked along a flume so that they
could be rolled in for a fast ride to the river.
Many flumes were constructed to deposit logs in the middle of the river so that
the current could carry them away.
Once in the mainstream of the river,
most of the logs are swept
downstream by the current. Some logs however got hung up on rocks and gravel
bars causing others to pile up
and form log jams.
The men who have the hard and dangerous job of breaking up the log jams and
heading them down river were called river pigs.
The tools of their trade included peaveys and long pike poles to pry the logs loose.
Cork boots with rows of spikes at the sole provided safe firm footing for
working on round,
rolling,
wet, slippery logs floating in the water.
River pigs had to be half acrobat
and half daredevil.
A strong back and quick feet where there only insurance.
Log jams were a constant problem.
Some jams backed up more than twenty million board feet of logs damming water
behind them.
The danger came in having to work in front of and at the bottom of
the dam freeing the logs that created the jam.
Heavy wooden boats called bateaus
were used for hauling men down river working jammed logs back into the
current,
rescuing man who fell into the river.
When jams began to pull free someone yelled "she's hauling",
and the crew made a mad dash for the bateau.
A floating cookhouse that accompanied the log drive was called the wanigan.
First used in 1931,
it was built on a cedar pole raft which was eighty feet long
by twenty two feet wide.
Steering sweeps fore and aft
were used to guide the wanigan through the whitewater rapids.
The wanigan preceded the crew down the river because the lumber jacks tended to
lean towards the mill
and worked better when they knew the wanigan was ahead of them.
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The yearly ritual of the Clearwater River log drives ended in 1971
when the construction of the Dworshak Dam on the north fork
turned miles of whitewater
into the Dworshak Reservoir.
The last drive began when logs harvested from surrounding forest land the
previous year were hauled to several large decking points along the rivers bank.
Fifty-one million board feet of prime logs were stockpiled in decks forty feet
high and up to a half a mile long.
The logs entered the north fork of the Clearwater approximately one hundred
miles upstream from Lewiston.
When the water reached the right level, the decks were tripped with skidding
bulldozers or grapple cranes setting off a chain reaction.
Some logs not stacked in the log decks were flung into the river with a crane.
Others were pushed in with log skidders.
The bateaus of the 1920's and 1930's went through several
changes,
and by 1971, they
evolved into jet-powered aluminum boats.
They were powerful enough to travel against the current
and were very useful for pulling jammed logs back into the current.
The wanigan also underwent major changes over the years.
Air-filled rubber pontoons replaced the cedar pole rafts.
The three sections included a cookhouse, and two sixteen-man bunkhouses.
The fore and aft thirty-five horsepower outboard motors maneuvered the wanigan
in the river.
It required considerable skill to guide the one hundred-fifteen foot long
twenty-six foot wide wanigan
in a fast flowing waters.
The wanigan was an essential part of the drive. The need for good food
and plenty of it
didn't change throughout the forty river drives.
Hard work in cold water made the crew legendary
eaters.
During the 1971 drive the thirty-four man crew consumed
six hundred pounds of beef
one hundred pounds of smoked ham,
eighty pounds of pork,
eighty pounds of bacon,,
twenty four pounds of sausage, thirty- five pounds of fryers, fifteen pounds of
cheese.
This was only a portion of the menu.
Some things remained unchanged.
men with peaveys and pike poles
still hdadthe cold, dangerous and back-breaking job of muscling logs down
the river to the mill.
The scene of the roaring whitewater drives on the Clearwater
is now indndated by the fifty-one mile Dwarshak Reservoir.
Trucks and trains have replaced the river as a means of hauling logs to the mill.
A colorful, yet rugged era of logging history is over
but not forgotten.
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