![Log jam on the St](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Log_jam_on_the_St._Croix_River_4343.jpg)
On June 13, 1886, a
log jam
A log jam is a naturally occurring phenomenon characterized by a dense accumulation of tree trunks and pieces of large wood across a vast section of a river, stream, or lake. ("Large wood" is commonly defined as pieces of wood more than in diame ...
developed in the
St. Croix River, close to
Taylors Falls, Minnesota
Taylors Falls is a city in Chisago County, Minnesota, United States, located at the junction of U.S. Highway 8 and Minnesota State Highway 95. The population was 1,055 at the 2020 census.
History
Taylors Falls was platted in 1850 or 1851, and ...
, and
St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. The river was used to transport large quantities of logs from the forests upstream to the sawmills, and log jams disrupted this business. The 1886 jam was described at the time by a local journalist as "the jammedest jam" he had encountered, and was very difficult to clear, with hundreds of men working for six weeks to clear it, eventually using steamboats and dynamite. The jam was also a major tourist attraction, with thousands of spectators every day. After the jam was broken up in July, cleanup work to remove the logs on the river banks continued until September.
Background
St. Croix River near Taylors Falls" width=250 height=250 zoom=14 latitude=45.3983782 longitude=-92.6506545 />
After the Wisconsin Territory
The Territory of Wisconsin was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 3, 1836, until May 29, 1848, when an eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Wisconsin. Belmont was ...
was established in 1836, large amounts of Native American land were ceded to the United States via the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters
Treaty of St. Peters may be one of two treaties conducted between the United States and Native American peoples, conducted at the confluence of the Minnesota River (then called "St. Peters River") with the Mississippi River, in what today is Me ...
. Much of the land was covered in vast pine forests, and logging
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars.
Logging is the beginning of a supply chain ...
activities started soon after. This was a winter activity, as the trees were so large that the only way to move them through the forests was by horse-drawn sleds, usually over ice. Teams of lumberjacks cut down trees all winter and collected them by the shores of the St. Croix River and its tributaries. Pine is light and floats well, so the logs could be easily transported downstream by log driving
Log driving is a means of moving logs (sawn tree trunks) from a forest to sawmills and pulp mills downstream using the current of a river. It was the main transportation method of the early logging industry in Europe and North America.
Histor ...
in the river. The logs were marked with the relevant company's timber mark
Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, wi ...
and then released into the river when the snow melted and the water rose in spring. Workers known as "river pigs" guided the logs down the river and kept them moving, especially at difficult places like shallows, rapids or sharp bends. Downstream, the logs were caught in the log boom
A log boom (sometimes called a log fence or log bag) is a barrier placed in a river, designed to collect and or contain floating logs timbered from nearby forests. The term is also used as a place where logs were collected into booms, as at the ...
at the St. Croix Boom Site
The St. Croix Boom Site is a historic and scenic wayside on the St. Croix River (Wisconsin–Minnesota), St. Croix River in Stillwater Township, Washington County, Minnesota, Stillwater Township, Minnesota, United States. It commemorates the lo ...
, where they were sorted by owner, bundled into rafts and then sent to the sawmills.
Causes and start of the 1886 log jam
In the area now covered by Interstate State Park, the St. Croix river marks the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin. It runs through a narrow gorge, the Dalles of the St. Croix, and makes a 90 degree turn at Angle Rock. The spring of 1886 was very dry, so the water level was too low to transport logs. This began to change when the Clam River dam was dynamited by the hermit Robert Davidson, who claimed the dam interfered with his meadow lands.[ ] Davidson was later charged for blowing up the dam and jailed for contempt of court. The release of the Clam River water caused the St. Croix to rise slightly. Sluice dams on several other tributaries, including Kettle River and Snake River
The Snake River is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest region in the United States. At long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Snake ...
, were opened as well, and coincidentally, heavy rain storms caused the rivers to rise further.[ (reprint of )] Large numbers of logs were dumped into the river all at once, more than the river or the driving crews working along could control. Shortly after midnight on June 13, 1886, while the driving crews were asleep in their tents, the logs were caught at Angle Rock and quickly started to accumulate. More and more logs ran onto the jam, including the 15 million board feet
The board foot or board-foot is a unit of measurement for the volume of lumber in the United States and Canada. It equals the volume of a length of a board, one foot wide and thick.
Board foot can be abbreviated as FBM (for "foot, board measure" ...
of the Clam River drive.
The ''Stillwater Messenger'' reprinted a report from the ''Taylor's Falls Journal'' about the start of the jam:
An estimated 125 to 150 million board feet of pine became stuck in the log jam. For comparison, the average annual production of pine in the St. Croix valley between 1870 and 1889 was 241 million board feet.
Clearing the log jam
Smaller log jams could be cleared just by human labor, with river pigs releasing key logs, but this log jam was more difficult and dammed up the river. On June 18, 1886, the ''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' reported that the jam was over two miles long and the largest to ever occur in the Northwest, and four hundred men were working day and night to clear it, while it was still growing at a rate of 700,000 board feet per hour. The logs were owned by more than 100 companies, who joined forces and shared the costs of breaking the jam, which were about $75,000 in total. When the log jam started to endanger the two-year-old bridge at Taylors Falls (which until then had been thought to be safe), logs sticking out of the almost 70 foot high pile were sawn off to protect the abutment
An abutment is the substructure at the ends of a bridge span or dam supporting its superstructure. Single-span bridges have abutments at each end which provide vertical and lateral support for the span, as well as acting as retaining walls ...
s. In attempts to clear the logs, two steamboats were used to tug at the front end of the jam. Land-based steam engines and horses were also used to pull out logs from the jam with ropes, with $100 worth of ropes having to be replaced every day due to wear. Around six to eight million feet of logs were released in this way. Finally, it was attempted to use dynamite bombs. On July 2, 1886, a 24-pound dynamite bomb was exploded, releasing a million feet of logs into the water and moving another 15 million feet out of the main jam. This had broken the jam in two, but also released most of the water that had been held back by the jam. As flowing water was necessary to get the logs moving, this could have impeded the work, but rain soon replenished the river. When a channel was cleared through the jam, only the logs on the banks still required clearing. Cleanup work involving at least 70 people was still ongoing in mid-September.
Tourist attraction
Log jams were a major disruption to the sawmills: the 57-day 1883 jam in the same area had played a part in causing the bankruptcy of Marine Mill in Marine on St. Croix. On the other hand, log jams brought large crowds of spectators and were welcomed by the local tourism industry in Taylors Falls. Thousands of tourists per day came to see the jam, by special excursion train from St. Paul
Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...
and by steamboat from Stillwater. The local hotels and restaurants were packed.
The end of log jams
To end the threat of log jams disrupting the industry, lumbermen organized to construct a dam. In 1890, Nevers Dam
Wild River State Park is a state park of Minnesota, United States, curving along of the St. Croix River. This long, narrow park is shaped somewhat like a sideways 'S', with development largely concentrated in the lower third. The remote upper ...
was finished at a cost of almost $250,000, situated upstream of St. Croix Falls. It was said to be the "largest pile-driven dam in the world".
The dam gave the lumbermen the ability to control the flow of both water and logs on the St. Croix River, and there were no further log jams on the St. Croix after 1886.
References
{{reflist
External links
Images of the log jam
at the Minnesota Historical Society
The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) is a nonprofit educational and cultural institution dedicated to preserving the history of the U.S. state of Minnesota. It was founded by the territorial legislature in 1849, almost a decade before statehoo ...
website
1886 in Minnesota
1886 in Wisconsin
St. Croix River (Wisconsin–Minnesota)
1886 disasters in the United States