Steam-Powered Lumber Mill

Since this is an outdoor lumber mill, I would presume it is at the site of some big construction project, rather than a permanent commercial business. That being said, judging by the size of the pile of sawdust in the foreground, this crew has been milling a lot of logs!

Hewing Timbers

It's easy to forget, in our day of automation and refined machinery, that America was built with skill and the sweat of manual labor. These timbers are massive, and are being hewn and prepared by hand.

Given that this is taking place in a railroad yard (the two Chicago, Burlington and Quincy boxcars suggest that this might be Chicago) suggests that these timbers might be destined for a railroad trestle (although that's purely speculation on my part).

At the Lumber Mill

This is a downright fascinating photograph. It appears to be in logging country (rather large trunks on the wagon), and is presumably a lumber mill...given all the cut lumber on the far right. What I find curious is the presence of two women and a little girl (and her rather large doll).

Now that's a doll!

White shoes? In that environment??

In the Lumberjack's Camp

I found this photo buried in an old box in the dim reaches of a run-down antique store in Norfolk Virginia: think Sanford and Son, here, but not so brightly lit, and definitely more cavernous. Price: $1. This appears to be an albumen print, and I'm guessing it is from the late 1800s, based on several clues.

Here's the full artifact; note that the edges of the actual print are crookedly cut.

Below, I've enhanced the image somewhat, tweaking the contrast and tone-mapping a bit to bring out some of the detail hidden in the fadedness of the print.

The bits of snow on the ground and the lack of leaves suggest a winter-ish or maybe spring scene, but one not so cold as to require heavy coats.

I've cropped the individual men so that you can open these images at a higher resolution, just in case anyone might actually recognize one of these fellows.

Three of the men have full felling axes, which supports the idea of a late 19th century date, when felling axes were used predominantly, and before two-man crosscut felling saws came into popular use. The presence of a grinding stone supports the idea that these are lumberjacks, in that cross-cut felling axes would need frequent sharpening to be as efficient as possible, and because their purpose was to cut across the grain of the wood (as compared to a splitting axe), sharpness was much more critical to professional lumberjacks who would be swinging their axes all day long..

The fourth man is holding one end of a two-man bucking saw, used for cutting up downed timber; bucking saws had a much narrower blade than felling saws.

Behind him appears to be the camp cook holding a basin, and just inside the tent one can just make out a stove with a coffee pot on it. Most of the cooking, though, would likely have been done on the wood-burning stove at the far right of the photo. The tent's stove and stove pipebehind the cook, suggest a kind of permanency to this camp that wouldn't be seen in the camps of other mountain men who move from site to site more frequently.

Lumberjacks lived a fairly solitary and migratory life, and women were seldom to be found in lumber camps. The industry peaked in America in 1906, when there were a half-million lumberjacks working in the forests across the country.