A 10,000-Ton Cigar of Logs, 76 Miles Long End to End
Builders at Stella, Washington, were shaping a 638-foot cigar-shaped raft of timber for a risky tow to San Francisco—10,000 tons of logs that would stretch 76 miles if laid end to end.
SAN FRANCISCO, April 5.—W. K. Balnea, who was interested in the great raft that went to pieces in a storm on the Pacific a few months ago while being towed here, is in the city. He says that in company with H. H. Robertson he is now constructing another raft, which he hopes to get safely to San Francisco. It is being built at Stella, Wash., forty miles up the Columbia river from its mouth, and will contain 400,000 lineal feet, the equivalent in board measure of 6,000,000 feet. The raft will be cigar shaped, will be 638 feet long, 53 feet wide, 36 feet in depth, and will draw between 20 and 21 feet of water. Its logs, if placed end to end, would reach the distance of 76 miles. The weight will be 10,000 tons. The girth at midships is 139 feet, and at the tapered section, 45. The raft is so well on toward completion now that it will be ready for sea by June 15. At that season the weather is always fair, with the prevailing winds, which are light from the northwest, favorable.
“Its logs, if placed end to end, would reach the distance of 76 miles.”
The nineteenth-century timber economy treated the Columbia as a conveyor belt, floating entire forests toward California markets. The raft is gone, but the same river still carries the argument over how resources leave the region and who benefits.
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