Pacific Log Rafts in Economic PerspectiveAuthor(s): Thomas R. CoxSource: Forest History, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Jul., 1971), pp. 18-19Published by: Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4004335 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 08:59

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental History are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Forest History.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.28 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 08:59:58 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

1888 and turned to the Pacific. He brought fi- nancial backing from Canadian and English sources and announced plans for a large sawmill on Bay Farm Island (present site of the Oakland International Airport) near Alameda, California. The mill was to process redwood logs rafted down the coast.

The timing was unfortunate. "Foreign capi- talists" were then under fire from California politicians and lumbermen. The state commis- sioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics charged that a lumber monopoly was in the making and cited the foreign-backed rafting scheme as the latest evidence. Robertson's big plan would have to wait. The captain tried unsuccessfully to drum up interest in floating California logs to Chile where railroad builders were supposed to be waiting, cash in hand.

Finally Robertson convinced a redwood lumber- man that his scheme of rafting logs to San Fran- cisco Bay was worth a chance. At Noyo, on the rocky beach of the Mendocino coast, they built a series of seven small rafts. Launched and strung together, the rafts stretched 720 feet. The steamer Emily secured and on a calm July night in 1889 headed south with "every indication pointing to a favorable passage," presumed the editor of the local paper. But all seven raftlets met the now- familiar fate of their predecessors. A second try in September also proved to be no match for the Pacific.

Two years passed before Robertson was able to persuade C. R. Johnson, president of the new Union Lumber Company at Fort Bragg, to share the 100-year-old dream of moving logs to market en masse. Down on the beach, high and dry, a million board feet of logs were layered into one large redwood cigar-shaped bundle. This time, brush was placed throughout the raft to help keep the logs together.

Launching day came and went. No matter how high the tide, Union Lumber Company's steamer Noyo couldn't budge the 200-foot-long raft off the beach. Local residents christened the stranded log pile "Robertson's Folly."

During the next six months Robertson and local millwright James Brett built a sort of shipway on the beach next to the wharf. It was formed of heavy timbers much like the beach cradle used earlier on the East Coast. One by one each of the logs from the old pile was removed by derrick and carefully dropped into place in the framework.

By April 1892 the rebuilt raft was ready. It featured a huge rudder, steered by manila lines attached to the steamer. In a show of bravado

(continued on page 20)

PACIFIC LOG RAFTS

THOMAS R. COX

There were profits to be earned through trans- porting logs from the Pacific Northwest to Cali- fornia in huge, ocean-going rafts. Their use by lumbermen for well over three decades attests to the fact. But it is impossible to determine precisely the margin of profit involved. Corpor- ate records necessary for the task are not avail- able. Only scattered bits of information remain.

It seems clear that rafting enjoyed no great competitive advantage over the established methods of shipping sawn lumber by ship and rail. Though rafts were long used, they had no great impact on the price of lumber in Cali- fornia nor did they drive other means of serving the markets there into disuse. Few seem to have anticipated that they would. The press of San Diego welcomed the first rafts primarily in terms of the jobs a sawmill in San Diego would supply. The San Diegan-Sun commented, it "is not thought that the price of lumber will be slaughtered" by the rafts and the mill they supply. Instead, the successful rafting operation that supplied the Benson Lumber Company's sawmill in San Diego was almost exceptional; most of the lumber used in southern California continued to be sawn at mills far to the north. Such would hardly have continued to be the case for long if lumber cut from rafted logs had been markedly cheaper than that trans- ported from the north by rail or ship.

Clearly rafting was not inexpensive. It took an average of forty-two working days to con- struct a raft and many tons of heavy chain to bind one together. Towage from the mouth of the Columbia River to San Diego alone cost eight to ten thousand dollars.

In spite of such expenses, Simon Benson re- ported to journalist-historian Fred Lockley that he saved two dollars per thousand on freight, a total of $150,000, on the twelve rafts he dis- patched from the Columbia to San Diego. Having demonstrated that a mill 1,100 miles

MR. Cox is associate professor of history at San Diego State College. In the midst of a long- term study of the history of the Pacific lumber trade, he is a leading authority on the subject.

18 FOREST HISTORY

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.28 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 08:59:58 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

IN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE

from its source of supply could obtain sawlogs at a reasonable cost, Benson was able to sell his mill to 0. J. Evenson and a group of associates for $400,000, a transaction that netted Benson a sizeable profit.

But more than a saving of two dollars per thousand on freight was responsible for Benson's sawmill in San Diego and the rafts that sup- plied it. Indeed when freight charges on mer- chant vessels declined during the years that followed, much of this margin on transportation must have vanished. In 1906 San Diego ap- peared to be on the eve of a period of tremendous growth. Benson, who had large logging opera- tions but no mills, coveted a share of the sales this growth would trigger. He resorted to a raft- supplied sawmill in San Diego in an attempt to gain entry into a market that otherwise would probably have been monopolized by the estab- lished cargo mills of the redwood coast and Pacific Northwest. He may have been encourag- ed in his decision to try rafting by the fact that the seamen's union appeared to be on the verge of winning its long battle with the owners of lumber schooners, a development which would undoubt- edly drive upward the cost of supplying lumber to southern California by ship. It may have been more than coincidence that the first lumber vessel with an all-union crew arrived in San Diego harbor in July 1906, only two months before the first log raft.

The Benson Lumber Company enjoyed sav- ings other than those on freight. It sold slab and other mill waste to residents of the San Diego area for use as fuel. In explaining the reasons for closing the mill in the 1940s, J. C. Evenson, who succeeded his father as head of the firm, noted that natural gas and electricity had by then replaced wood for heating and cooking in the area; as a result, the sale of waste products which had made the sawmill "practical and profitable" had ceased.

Other income resulted from the deckloads that over half the rafts carried. Added cost from transporting lumber, spars, lath, shingles, and cedar poles in this manner was almost negligible. Following the arrival of the first raft at San Diego, the Benson firm was able to offer

piling at sixteen cents per linear foot. Earlier, the lowest price had been twenty-six cents. Earnings from incidental sales such as these appear to have been a major factor in making rafting profitable. Moreover entry and moorage expenses were minimal at quiet, capacious San Diego harbor. This, too, helped to insure the success of the undertaking.

When the Benson Lumber Company ceased rafting and closed its mill, it did so not only because there was no longer a market for slab, edgings, and sawdust in San Diego, but also because of changes in the woods. Logs 100 to 200 feet long were needed to give the rafts sufficient rigidity to withstand the strain of the long haul. The Benson Timber Company had supplied these from a tract on the lower Co- lumbia near Clatskanie. By 1940 this tract was nearly depleted. New stands capable of pro- ducing a large number of tree-length logs and so located that these could be gotten out in one piece were unavailable. Trucks were rapidly replacing logging railroads and were incapable of handling such long sticks. Regardless of developments in San Diego, the changing nature of woods operations insured that the end of log rafting was not far off. World War II, changed freight rate structures ashore and at sea, and the demise of the market for slabs and other mill waste only hastened the demise of what had already become a marginal operation. Sources: Brown, Nelson, Logging (New York: John Wiley

& Sons, 1949). Evenson, J. C. "The Benson Log Rafts" (type-

script, Serra Museum Library, San Diego). Lockley, Fred, History of the Columbia River

Valley from The Dalles to the Sea (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Company, 1928).

Meeker, Leroy E., interview, Nov. 10, 1959 (transcript, Serra Museum Library, San Diego). Newell, Gordon, ed., The H. W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest (Seattle: Superior Publishing Company, 1966).

San Diego San Diegan-Sun. San Diego Tribune-Sun. San Diego Union.

JULY 1971 19

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.28 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 08:59:58 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions