SKID-ROADS
Long before rubber-tired skidders and “high-lead” logging methods were introduced, “skid-roads” were used to more easily yard (move) logs from the forest to a mill-site, landing, rail, or shipping point. For the reader not familiar with that type of road, the accompanying picture taken around 1910 in the Kelso neighborhood provides a good example.
The skids were peeled logs 8 feet long buried crossways to the road at intervals of about 6 feet with only a few inches of the log above ground level. By eliminating the friction of pulling the log or logs on bare ground and digging up a lot of dirt, the logs would glide single-file smoothly over the skids. Most of the smaller logging operations used four-horse teams. Larger loads could be pulled by as many as five pairs of oxen in teams. The sharp front edge of the log that was being pulled had been rounded off by the driver with an ax to prevent the log from catching on an obstruction.
To further improve the system, the skids were often greased so the logs would slide more easily. Before petroleum grease was available, almost anything slippery was used: lard, bear grease, fish oil, and at times water.
Standing at the head of his four-horse team yarding logs is my uncle, Bert Jonsrud, who also had what was considered a part-time job as Constable in the Cascade District, the area from Damascus to Mt. Hood. Bert’s brother-in-law, Will Bell (with suspenders) stands at right with an unknown boy who is carrying a bucket of something slippery to “grease the skids.”
The skid roads were definitely used in the late 1800s and probably until about the teen years when “high-lead” logging with steam-donkeys, spar-poles, cables, pulleys, etc. were used for yarding logs from the forest. More recently, giant rubber-tired skidders have done the job.
The Sandy Historical Society’s Museum has a picture of a 10-yoke ox-team (20 oxen) pulling a huge chain of logs on a skid-road somewhere between Aims and Larch Mountain for the Donahue Logging Co. sometime in the late 1800s. The picture was donated by George and Jessie Thomas from the Bull Run area. George’s father, Mack Thomas was an early logger of my father’s era who always came to Sandy Grade School baseball games in his later years. He was also the “floor-manager” (bouncer) at Grange Dances. A tough old logger, nobody messed around with Mack!
Also exhibited in the museum is an ox-yoke, a heavy piece of wood that tied each pair of oxen together. The oxen, already carrying the heavy weight of a wooden yoke, had to be whipped unmercifully to pull, slipping and staggering over each of the many skids. It was a cruel method that most likely wouldn’t be tolerated today.
The Sandy area’s 100 years of logging and sawmills slowed when the Walter Koch sawmill and logging operation closed in the early 1970s and with few exceptions, ended when the Vanport Products mill in Boring closed at the end of the 1990s. Much old-growth timber is federally protected now and large blocks of renewable timber-land are owned by large corporations.
The picture shows part of the process of yarding logs on a skid road in the 1920s. Bert Jonsrud is on the left and Will Bell is the logger second from the right. The young boy at the right carrying the grease can is ready to “grease the skids”.Photo courtesy of Phil Jonsrud.
