![]() ![]() Often, in the interest of keeping the process moving smoothly, no talking was allowed at meals, other than to ask for food to be passed, and most meals were consumed within 12 minutes – a bit incredible, when you consider the loggers were consuming up to 9,000 calories a day in order to stay fueled for their heavy workload. Notably, camp cooks also had to be good cooks or the loggers wouldn’t stay, so they often reigned supreme at camp. Camp cooks typically worked over an open fire and had to make most edibles from scratch. Cooking for a logging camp demanded stamina and physical strength since items like flour and salt pork were commonly stored in heavy barrels. Steeply brewed tea and water were more commonly served than coffee in the early days.Ĭooking often fell to women, usually led by the wife of the foreman, but in some camps was also done by men. ![]() Men slept in muzzle loaders, bunks so named because they were set so closely together that they had to be crawled into from one end, and typically socialized on a common deacon’s seat that ran the length of the bunkhouse.Ĭamp kitchens, meanwhile, were large, and food was plentiful though basic: limited meat choices such as salted beef, pork, or fish, as well as soups, stews and gravies and staples such as vegetables, beans, rice, eggs, oatmeal, grits, pancakes, bread, pastries, and pies. Personal property was kept on bunks (or on-person) in a canvas grain bag tied at either end with rope, known as a turkey, sometimes referred to as a crummy (over time, the term crummy morphed into a name for the vehicle taking loggers to a work site). The camps were almost exclusively male, many featuring rustic bunkhouses (typically 10 by 24 feet) which housed as many as 16 men in two-tiered, wooden bunks that lined the outer walls. These structures were often built on skids so they could be easily dismantled and moved whenever it was time to break camp. Other benefits included meals and lodging. ![]() By 1920 wages had risen to about a dollar a day. According to David Cole, author of Logging at Forney’s Creek, loggers in the early 1900s earned around sixty-five cents for a ten-hour day. The truth is, logging was an often-dangerous occupation involving hard manual labor for long hours at minimal pay. Life in the Logging Campsįor those who might tend to romanticize the past, an 1894 feature in Munsey’s Magazine had this to say about life in the logging camps: “A lake captain, who in his younger days spent several years in the woods, one day remarked to the writer that if he had his choice between spending three months in a lumber camp and the same amount of time in jail, he would unhesitatingly choose the latter.” Logging camps for these companies and others were soon established across the western forests, with first oxen, then horse teams and local trains moving massive logs, and many of the area towns prospered as a result. Three entrepreneurial men were largely responsible for the logging activity which occurred in the Lake Toxaway area: Joseph Silversteen, Louis Carr, and Carl Moltz (they will be explored in detail in a future blog). Some also credit the arrival of George Vanderbilt in nearby Asheville and his ambitious build of Biltmore Estate (1889-1895) for piquing interest in the area, first for tourism and then its abundant timber resources. Much of the area’s lumber trade occurred between 1900-1920, but most sources agree that the industry began to proliferate in 1895, when the first area railroad - Henderson & Brevard Railroad (later the Transylvania Railroad Company) - came to town. First settlers felled trees for shelter and fuel, and small sawmill operations existed, but there was no large-scale logging. Transportation was limited to distances capable by horse and oxen due to its mountainous, heavily forested terrain. Early YearsĮstablished in 1861 from sections of Jackson and Henderson counties, Transylvania County was originally and primarily home to subsistence farms in small communities. It’s no surprise then that wealthy industrialists, who were making their way to North Carolina for leisure, would also be drawn to the opportunities of the timber trade by the rich bio-diversity of hard and soft woods to be found on these virgin grounds. ![]() Courtesy of the Forest History Society, Durham, NCīy the end of the Civil War, though, many areas of the Northeast were logged out yet lumber was increasingly needed to drive the Industrial Revolution and meet the demands of the burgeoning American economy. ![]()
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