The Elephant-Powered Sawmills of Burma
A visiting mill manager shares tales of jungle timber operations where elephants handle everything from the logs to the finished lumber.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
W. S. Patterson, manager of a sawmill in Rangoon, Burmah, recently visited Aberdeen to study local lumber methods. In his home country, mills operate year-round despite an annual rainfall of 120 inches. Because teak is the only wood resistant to ants, it is the primary timber harvested. The industry relies heavily on animals: elephants and buffaloes haul logs to the banking grounds, while elephants alone roll the logs into the water, haul them up, place them on the carriage, and even carry the trimmings to the refuse pile. These 'elephant-edgermen' deliver finished timber f.o.b. to the docks. Since his visit to the United States, Mr. Patterson has successfully installed a Rodgers Iron Works edger in his Burmah operation.
“Elephants and buffaloes haul the logs to the banking ground, elephants roll the logs into the water... elephants carry the trimmings to the refuse pile.”
While this reads like an exotic travelogue from a bygone era, the story highlights the global reach of Pacific Northwest industrial equipment even in the 1890s. It captures a moment when the regional expertise of Aberdeen’s timber industry was being exported to modernize labor practices halfway across the world.
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