Lumbering: Wet hogs and jammed logs

The Daily News serving Greenville, Belding and Montcalm Counties has this history of logging in the North areas:

The pine country north of Saginaw Bay to the Straights of Mackinac, between Lake Huron, forms a contrast to the Saginaw Valley type of logging. While the Saginaw Valley streams were gently flowing streams, the streams north were tortuous with waterfalls and large boulders. The Rifle, Au Sable and Thunder Bay were all rivers with fast currents and sharp curves. The Black, Pigeon and Sturgeon rivers had special difficulties and dams. The Lumberman's Memorial on the Au Sable River is a monument to the loggers' daring exploits on this river.

The bays around Lake Huron made excellent booming areas. The bays allowed sorting areas for many logs that entered the river, leaving the main river open for logs to continue downriver to other millponds and sawmills.

With the bays being used for holding areas for logs, it left the main river open for the many river tugboats that operated in the area. River tugs were always pulling logs upriver or downriver to different sawmills.

The Tawas City boom had a six-acre holding area for sorting logs. All logs were sorted by log mark. Each log mark had its own holding pen. The pens were floating log enclosures, four sided with one end that could be opened to allow logs in.

Between the holding pens was a channel that the logs were moved down and into a holding pen.

At the Black River Village, a mast and spar industry was started in 1868. This company became the world's largest, supplying New York, Boston and other seaport towns with the best boat mast and spars in the world.

A large log storage area boom was located at Alpena. The sawmill was located on an island in the middle of the Thunder Bay River.

On Burt, Mullet and Black lakes, many booms were located. Some were sorting booms while others were holding booms, which held the logs from going any farther downriver. A holding boom was a number of logs chained together, end to end, which went from one side of the river to the other side.

The more daring souls used this boom bridge to get to one side or the other of the river.

There's more -- read the whole article if you get a chance.