A Three-Mile Log Jam Opens the Upper Skokomish
After fifty years, a timber company clears a river-blocking mass of logs and puts out a call for loggers.
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.
Preparations are being made for a lively logging season on the Skokomish River. For fifty years past, an immense jam, nearly three miles long, has been forming, cutting off all access to the immense belts of timber along the upper portion of the river. The Skokomish Boom and Logging Company, of which J. A. Hildebrand of this city is a member, has had a force of men at work for eighteen months past, wrecking the mass of logs and making a clear passage in the river. At the mouth of the river an excellent boom has been constructed, in which all logs will be caught and sorted. Mr. Hildebrand is now at the Olympia Hotel and is anxious to secure loggers to take advantage of the clear run.
“Mr. Hildebrand is now at the Olympia Hotel and is anxious to secure loggers to take advantage of the clear run.”
The Skokomish watershed has been reshaped by logging, dams and fisheries conflicts for more than a century. This 1891 item captures the moment a private company cleared a natural obstruction to open timber country, and it shows how rural jobs then depended on such infrastructure and word-of-mouth recruiting.
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