While early settlers carved out their claims on the lush prairie of Central Whidbey Island, the forest primeval loomed at their back door. And their front door.
A new exhibit opening Friday, Oct. 31 at Island County Historical Society Museum in Coupeville traces the history of logging on Whidbey Island. The display is being organized by Joan Handy, collection manager, and museum docent Betty Gewald, who said she knows “everything about logging,” after preparing this exhibit.
“The forest on Whidbey was the biggest in the world,” she said. “The trees were huge.”
Driving the length of the island now it seems the tallest wooden things are those humongous laminate-beam power poles sprouting along the highway, but at one time the island was indeed blanketed by some of the largest trees on earth. Remnants of Whidbey’s old growth forest can be seen at Ebey Reserve and Deception Pass State Park.
Rivaled only by the redwoods of Northern California, Whidbey and Camano islands bristled with hemlocks three to four feet in diameter and up to 200 feet tall and Western red cedars four to six feet in diameter and up to 200 feet tall. Sitka spruce and Douglas fir with diameters five to seven feet soared to heights up to 300 feet. It would take two grown men to reach around these trees, and cutting them down was not an easy task.
The first commercial loggers on the island in the mid to late 1800s used axes to fell these behemoths, in the ultimate war of man against nature.
According to Richard White’s account in his book “Land Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island County, Washington,” the loggers cut the felled trees into logs using crosscut saws — also known as “misery whips” — then hitched them to a six-yoke bull ox team and dragged them to the water’s edge. From here they were either loaded onto sailing ships or rafted to mills around Puget Sound. With no rivers for rapid transport on the island, the closest body of any water was saltwater. Holmes Harbor, Penn Cove and Oak Harbor were a sea of logs.
The term “skid road” came from this method of transport, with the bumpy road made of small logs laid cross-wise and greased with dogfish oil.
White said a good team of oxen could haul 10,000 to 12,000 board feet of timber in a trip, with up to four one-mile trips a day.
By the 1880s loggers sped up the labor-intensive timber harvesting using crosscut saws to fell the trees, and horses, which were faster than the plodding oxen, to haul the timber out. They also added more men.
As the trees fell, logging camps spread across the island. It was easier for the loggers to live where they worked, cutting commute time considerably. In 1896, the only year for which a count is available, there were 115 men working in timber camps in Island County.
In order to fell a tree, loggers first cut springboard notches in the massive trunks, then stood on planks inserted in the notches to cut the tree at the point where it became a smooth cylinder. This saved them the labor of cutting the tree at the stump, and again above the butt-swell as it lay on the ground. These notches can still be found on 10 to 20 foot tall old burned stumps hidden in second-growth brush.
“Loggers were not what you would call neat and tidy,” Gewald said. “There was a lot of waste.”
With old growth trees having long expanses of branchless — and knotless— trunks, the loggers discarded everything from the branches to the top of the tree. This is the type of wood that produces tight grained, knot-free wood, still prized by woodworkers today. Just say “old growth, vertical grain fir” to a cabinet maker and watch him drool.
If one of these giants shattered when it fell, it was left. If it showed rot, it was left. It it fell in a ravine, left again. With the supply seemingly inexhaustible, there was little thought to conserving timber.
If there is one consolation to this seemingly rampant destruction of the forest, it is that the cumbersome bull teams could not reach very far into the forest. More than a mile or two from the water it ceased to be a profitable method. This was not always a problem, however, on narrow Whidbey Island.
As Gewald pointed out, “In some places on the island a mile or two in from the water and you’re on the other side.”
Logging changed with the coming of the steam-driven “donkey” engine in the early 1900s. Loggers were able to haul logs farther distances with high lead logging, using a series of cables and pulleys.
White says the advent of steam donkeys cut the cost of timber harvesting in half, but it can be said that it also ushered in a far less romantic era.
The style of logging represented at the Island County Historical Museum illustrates a time when men were men, and trees were trees.
Cut into history
Island County Historical Society Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday through April. Admission prices are $3 general; $2 seniors, students, military; $6 for a family of three or more. Admission is free for members of Island County Historical Society and children under age 5.
Special events and programs may require an additional fee.
All facilities are accessible; for disability services, call (360) 678-3310.
The museum is at 908 NW Alexander St., Coupeville.
You can reach News-Times reporter Marcie Miller at mmiller@whid
beynewstimes.com or call 675-6611
