Working in the Woods
Our summer of 2015 exhibit, Working in the Woods, explored the jobs and occupational culture that emerged in the region during the logging boom (1880-1920). Jobs ranged from dangerous river driving to logging railroads to camp cooks, but all in these jobs helped create a unique logging culture with a sense of humor despite dangerous conditions. This exhibit was partially funded by a mini-grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council.
See full exhibit panels here.
Jobs
People have been cutting down trees to build houses and farms for hundreds of years, but the logging boom in the late 1800s took it to a whole other level. Locals, immigrants, and freed slaves took to the woods to fill the hundreds of jobs in the logging industry. They ranged from cutting down the trees to doing the cooking to building the railroad to transport the logs to the mill. Each job had its own unique regional title.
Learn how to talk like a “woodhick” in this game by matching the job title to its description!
Bark Peelers
Photo courtesy of the Monongahela National Forest and USDA
Mower Lumber Co
Photo courtesy of the Monongahela National Forest and USDA
Moving the Logs
Getting the logs to the mill to be made into usable wood products was hard work! First, teams of men would use horses or later steam engines to drag the cut logs to where they would be transported. In the early days, the logs would then be “driven” down the river. The loggers would live in “arks” or floating houses while they pushed the logs to the mill. Later, the logs would be loaded on to trains and taken to the mill. Unfortunately the tracks were hastily made and the trains would frequently derail.
Log skidding using horses
Photo courtesy of the Monongahela National Forest and USDA
Log drag using tractor
Photo courtesy of Rob Whetsell
The Resilient Forest
The Resilient Forest
By the 1920s all the trees were gone, causing an end to the lumber boom. Companies had stripped the earth bare until there was nothing left “bigger than a beanpole.” The land was so bare that the Monongahela National Forest was created, people called it the Monongahela Briar patch.
From this tragedy, modern day forestry arose, which recommends practices to regrow and sustain the forest for future use. It is because of these practices that our landscape looks how it does now.
Canaan Mountain (1934)
Photo courtesy of the Monongahela National Forest and USDA
Monongahela National Forest
Photo credit: David Ede
Canaan Mountain (1954)
Photo courtesy of the Monongahela National Forest and USDA.
This exhibit was partially funded by a mini-grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council.
Meet the Exhibit Designer:
Josh served as an AFHA AmeriCorps during the 2014-15 season. Since then, he has consulted on a wide range of public folklore and museum exhibit projects, including for the South Dakota Arts Council, the Nebraska Folklife Network, the Idaho Commission on the Arts, and the Four Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario, Oregon. Josh now works full-time as a Folklorist for the Wyoming Arts Council, and lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Graphics by Jessica Linback
