Welcome to the Curator’s Corner! At the Museum, we are constantly doing research based on upcoming exhibitions, programs and questions we are asked by people like you. Each month, we’ll share some of what we find. This month, we feature a photographic story of the Lumber Industry of the Saginaw Valley.

People were fascinated by the lumberjacks, or shanty boys as they were called in Michigan, of the 1800s. They wanted to know all they could

about them – and photographs were an integral part in telling their story.

It was also a great opportunity for photographers. Suddenly they were able to turn photography, which was still in its infancy, from a novelty into a business. Photographers such as the Goodridge Brothers, who arrived in Saginaw during the early 1860s, transported their massive cameras up the river and into the woods in order to fulfill the need in American society to know more about lumbering industry life. The following photographs tell the story as words alone cannot.

Americans were not the first to utilize the trees of the Saginaw Valley. Native Americans, in particular the Ojibwa or Chippewa, seasonally migrated throughout the Saginaw Valley, often building semi-permanent shelters called wigwams. These structures were made of saplings and were covered with birch and elm bark. The Native Americans also used birch bark and cedar in the construction of their canoes.

When the French arrived in Michigan seeking Beaver furs and a northwest passage to the orient, they utilized the available timber to construct forts, such as Fort Michilimackinac and Ford Detroit, in order to protect their interests; trading posts to futher their business interests; and missions, such as the Father Marquette mission at St. Ignace, to promote the spread of Christianity.

Water transportation routes were essential to the lumber industry. Of the river systems in the eastern Lower Peninsula of Michigan, the Saginaw River was the most important. Even though the Saginaw River is only 25 miles long, it is fed by an impressive network of tributary rivers and streams that extend for nearly 900 miles in every direction and meander through endless pine forests. However, the Chippewa, Tittabawassee, Cass, Bad, Shiawassee and Flint Rivers form the main arteries of the lumbering industry of the Saginaw Valley. Since the six rivers converge to form the Saginaw River, it was efficient as well as cost effective to float the logs from the lumber camps to the sawmills along the Saginaw River.

Although pine forests coverd 2/3 of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, the best pines were found north of the frost-free line that strectched from Saginaw to Muskegon; primarily in the Saginaw Valley. The near-solid forest of pine that ran for 80 miles along the Tittabawassee River to Gladwin County was considered some of the best pine in the eastern United States. Many of the white pines harvested in this region of the Saginaw Valley during the early lumbering days were over 200 years old and measured 175 feet in height and averaged about 5 feet in diameter.

The sawmills in Saginaw were basically of similar construction and usually consisted of a two-story structure built close to the river. The first floor was reserved for the steam power plants and heavy machines that drove the saws, while cutting was done on the second floor. Logs were pulled from the river millponds and fed into saws that ripped the logs into 1-inch thick boards. Rough-sawn boards were edged, planed and then stacked on wharves along the river to dry and await shipment eastward.

The sawmill was the first unit of the lumber industry to achieve increased output through technological change. Although water-powered mills were still common in the 1860s, steam saws were rapidly replacing them. In fact, so rapidly that it became necessary to devise faster methods of handling both logs and sawn lumber to avoid pile-ups and delays. By the end of the 1870s, virtually every mill operation in Michigan had been mechanized to some degree.

Please watch for more images from Saginaw's lumbering history in the next installment of the Curator's Corner.

Curator's Corner Archive
Volume #1 - The History of Women's Hats