Madera Sugar Pine Company

The Madera Sugar Pine Company was a lumber company that operated in the Sierra Nevada region of California during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was known for its use of innovative technologies, such as the first log flume and logging railroad in the southern Sierra, and the adoption of the Steam Donkey engine in commercial logging. The company had a significant impact on the region, leading to the founding of several towns, including Madera, Fish Camp, and Sugar Pine, as well as the growth of Fresno Flats and the formation of Madera County. In addition, the company contributed to the agriculture in California in California through its production of wooden shipping boxes and was involved in a U.S. Supreme Court case related to employer obligations.

At its peak, The Madera Sugar Pine Company employed over 600 men in its logging operations and another 1,000 men in its lumbering plant, and produced 50 million board feet of lumber annually. Most of the company's production was exported outside of California, and it even supplied two carloads of "the best Sugar Pine in the world" for Theodore Roosevelt's reconstruction of the White House. In total, the company logged over acres and produced over 1.3 billion board feet of lumber before closing permanently in 1933 due to declining lumber supply and demand caused by The Great Depression. Despite the economic challenges of the time, The Madera Sugar Pine Company had shown a profit in every year of its operation.

In 1961, service resumed as the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad, a heritage railway. The railroad is built on a section of the original railroad grade used between 1908 and 1924.

Predecessors

The California Lumber Company (1874–1878)

The California Lumber Company was founded in February 1874 to bring lumber from the Sierra Nevada to the newly completed railroad in the San Joaquin Valley. The endeavor was ambitious and multifacted, requiring the construction of lumber camps and mills and a log flume to deliver the lumber down from high elevations in the Sierra.

Log Flume

A 54-mile (87 km) log flume – the longest flume of its kind – was built to transport rough cut lumber from the mountains to the valley floor in Madera where it could be finished and sold to the global market by way of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The route was surveyed in 1873 and construction began in 1874. The project required many high trestles to span the mountains and rolling foothills. The flume was ready for the 1877 season with an estimated construction cost of $250,000.

Lumber often crept over the sides of the long flume, creating both a loss for the operation and the potential for significant damage to the flume itself. William Thurman, one of the founders of the California Lumber Company, created a novel technique of clamping bundles of lumber together which kept them going over the edge during the significant journey. His flume clamp was patented in 1877.

Bankruptcy

The drought of 1877 caused the underfinanced company to cease operations after only three seasons.

The Madera Flume and Trading Company (1878–1899)

The California Lumber Company was reorganized and refinanced as the Madera Flume and Trading Company in 1878. The new company expanded the logging operations significantly by connecting the existing Soquel Mill to the flume with a four-mile narrow gauge railway that would steadily expand to reach more and more outlying timber tracts.

Steam Donkey

The Madera Flume and Lumber Company was the first to replace oxen teams with steam donkeys in a commercial logging operation in the late 1880s. The steam donkey is a small steam engine that turns a capstan to reel in a rope or cable with the power of many animals, allowing loggers to cut trees that they would not have previously been able to transport, and allowing loggers to continue working in both cold and hot weather. This significantly increased seasonal lumber production.

Sawmill Expansion

The Soquel Mill was built in 1881 and connected to a lengthened log flume upstream from the original California Mill. In 1882, a second California Mill was established near Nelder Grove. However, this mill did not have access to a nearby water source, so lumber was transported by a forest tramway to join up with the flume. At this time, the company was able to transport 100,000 board feet of finished lumber to Madera daily.

Logging Railway and ''Betsy''

''Betsy'' was an early Shay locomotive that began operating in 1889 from the Soquel Mill. She was the first of her kind to operate in the southern Sierra Nevada and represented a significant advancement in logging techniques and efficiency. The ''Visalia Weekly Delta'' reported:

''Betsy'' had a unique design, with a small cab that required the engineer to also serve as the fireman. Despite this quirk, Betsy became one of the longest-serving Shay locomotives in the Sierra and remained in service through the 1930s..

Oxen pull a heavy lumber wagon for the Madera Sugar Pine Company.jpg, Before steam power, oxen teams were the only way to get felled logs to the mill.
Betsy The Madera Flume and Trading Company Locomotive.jpg, ''Betsy'', the first locomotive in the southern Sierra, began operating in 1881.

Logging the Giant Sequoia

Loggers cut many giant sequoias in Nelder Grove. But the wood had limited commercial potential. It tended to break apart when felled due to its massive size. And it was less suitable for construction than old growth sugar pine and ponderosa. While other species were clearcut by 1897, more than 100 of the largest sequoias survived.

By the late 1890s, The Madera Flume and Trading Company began to wind down. Access to available timber tracts dwindled. And the long depression had weakened demand for lumber exports. The California Lumber Company mills were permanently shut down and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1878. Only the Madera lumber yard continued to run on a limited basis. Contract loggers kept it alive by feeding cut logs to the flume.

The Madera Sugar Pine Company (1899–1931)

By the turn of the century, the old-growth white pine of the upper Midwest had become depleted. Sugar pine, with its large size and straight grain, became a highly valued substitute for white pine. This led many established lumber interests to push westward into the Sierra Nevada.

In 1889, Arthur Hill, a Michigan-born timber magnate, and his associates purchased the assets of the Madera Flume and Trading Company and expanded its operations. Its existing logging railroad was extended to newly secured timber tracts, and the flume to Madera was reconstructed. The scale of the operation was expanded to rival the Fresno Flume and Irrigation Company and Sanger Lumber Company, which had sprung up as competitors.

The sugar pine tree became the central symbol for the reincorporated company. It featured in the company's name and logo and became the namesake for the newly constructed company town and state-of-the-art mill.

Log flume reconstruction

A new earth dam on the Lewis Fork of the Fresno River served two purposes. It formed a log pond to serve the new Sugar Pine mill and created a water source for a new flume head. The completely rebuilt flume followed the original route through Fresno Flats, dropping a total of elevation on the journey to Madera. To maintain the proper grade, over 200 trestles were built, some of them high. The flume cost $275,000 to construct, an average of $5000 per mile. It used approximately 5,700,000 feet of redwood lumber and 2100 kegs of nails.

Sugar Pine Mill Log Pond.jpg, The log pond at Sugar Pine Mill.
Madera Sugar Pine Company China Store Flume Trestle.jpg, Flume trestle at the China Store grade.
Madera Flume Celebration 1900.jpg, Residents of Madera celebrate the completion of the "world's longest lumber flume" on October 27, 1900.

Labor and immigration

Logging in the Sierra relied on immigrant labor. Chinese laborers, many of whom had arrived during the California Gold Rush, played a major role. They helped complete the original Madera Flume in three years. Later, they filled many of the jobs in the Sugar Pine lumber yards.

Segregation was the rule in work and life. Chinese workers occupied the bottom rung in the stratified society of the lumber camp. They were made ineligible for any positions other than common laborer, were hired and paid through a middleman (unlike other workers), and lived in a separate Chinatown below where the flume left the sawmill. Chinese workers faced anti-Chinese sentiment and received less legal protection than non-Chinese did in the aftermath of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

By 1922, Madera Sugar Pine decided to replace these Chinese laborers with Mexican laborers who had become readily available following the Immigration Act of 1917. At the end of the logging season, officers of the company set fire to Chinatown, waiting until the first snowfall so that no other structures would be damaged in the blaze.

Supreme Court case

''Madera Sugar Pine Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission of California'' 262 U.S. 499 (1923) was a United States Supreme Court case that upheld death benefits to non-resident alien dependents of employees who died as the result of no-fault industrial accidents. The decision upheld the Workmen's Compensation Act of California which was found not to be in violation with the U.S. Constitution. The ruling required that the Madera Sugar Pine Company compensate partially dependent survivors of two Mexican laborers who died on the job.

1922 Sugar Pine fire

A catastrophic fire swept through the town on September 9, 1922. The sawmill, lumber yard, and acres of surrounding forest were destroyed.

Madera Sugar Pine immediately announced plans to rebuild and expand. Equipment was ordered, manufactured and shipped from the eastern US by rail, including a modern two-band sawmill. Crews worked throughout the winter to transport and assemble over of equipment, hauling it over miles of dirt road from Madera to the mill site. Operations resumed the following April with an expanded capacity of 350,000 board feet a day.

Sugar Pine Mill Flume Complex.jpg, The flume complex at the second Sugar Pine Mill.
Sugar Pine Mill Complex - Loading Yards.jpg, The expanded flume loading yards.

Liquidation

The mill at Sugar Pine ceased activity in November 1931 with wood piling up in the Madera lumber yard due to the Great Depression. With the economic situation showing no signs of improvement by 1933, the flume, lumber yard, planing mill and box factory were permanently closed. Every locomotive was sold or scrapped.

Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad

In 1961, service resumed as the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad, a heritage railway. The railroad is built on a section of the original railroad grade used between 1908 and 1924.

Locomotive Roster

"Betsy," a Shay Locomotive of the Madera Sugar Pine Company, near Soquel Mill.jpg, ''Betsy'' and a short log train
Madera Sugar Pine - Locomotive - Arthur Hill - Builders Photo.jpg, ''Arthur Hill'' at the Lima Locomotive Works.
Madera-Sugar-Pine - Shay Locomotive- EM-Fowler.jpg, ''E.M. Fowler'' arrives at Sugar Pine.
The Madera Sugar Pine Company's No. 5 Locomotive.jpg, ''No. 5'' and a load of pine logs in 1918.
Madera Sugar Pine Locomotive 6 Builder's Photo.jpg, Builder's photo of ''No. 6''.
The Madera Sugar Pine Locomotive 7.jpg, ''No. 7'' was the first gas-mechanical engine used by Madera Sugar Pine.

References

Further reading

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External links

Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad
Logging in the United States
History of the Sierra Nevada (United States)
Heritage railroads in California
3 ft gauge railways in the United States
Narrow gauge railroads in California
Sierra National Forest
Sierra Nevada (United States)
Transportation in Mariposa County, California
Defunct California railroads
Railway companies established in 1874
American companies established in 1874
Railway companies disestablished in 1931
Closed railway lines in the United States