Harvesting Northern Ontario timber in the mid 1870s wasn't easy.  It meant overcoming very harsh obstacles, not the least of which was how do you get the timber to market? Certainly not over land.

Moving booms of timber south across northern Ontario's small lakes, while fairly simple, was slow work.  Moving them down the shallow rivers that connected those lakes was slower still, and consequently expensive.

The logs were corralled into booms which had to towed across the lakes.  Easier said than done without modern technology. How would you corral and tow 60,000 logs?

Loggers' first solution left a lot to be desired.  A boom was pulled by a raft, reducing the problem to "how do we tow the raft?"  This was accomplished with a 400 pound anchor and about two miles of rope.

Six men in a "pointer" (a long six-oarsmen rowboat) would heft the raft's huge anchor into the pointer, then row two miles down lake, where they would drop the anchor.

Then men on the raft would (in theory) "pull the anchor in,"  thereby pulling the raft and its boom of logs to the spot the anchor had been dropped, drawing the raft and its boom part way across the lake.

Once the raft was two miles closer to the other shore, the oarsmen would row the anchor another two miles into the lake so the same procedure could be repeated.

It was hard work for all concerned, even when things went right. Many men simply weren't strong enough.

The second solution: Make the raft larger (approximately 30 feet square) and strong enough to carry work horses.

The anchor rope was then fed under the raft, up through a winch that the horses would turn by walking in a circle around the winch, mid-raft.

But even this method of moving logs was very slow and tedious work. Almost any breeze would stop forward progress. Often booms had to be hauled across lakes at night when the lake was calm. It was not unusual to have to "lay up" for days, waiting for the wind to die down.

At the end of the lake, at the river's mouth, the logs were released and driven down river into another boom on the next lake.

The rafts were now too large and awkward to portage around the shallow rivers, so another raft had to be built at the other end of the river, to take the logs across the next lake.

This solution was far too slow and dangerous. Many companies found it too time consuming. They often lost half the season on one log drive. A better solution was badly needed.

Solution >