Historic Hood River
Welcome to Camp #3
Notes
We recently scanned a nice set of images of the Stanley Smith Lumber Company’s “Camp #3”. Camp 3 was a feeder into the Green Point Mill, at what is now Kingsley Reservoir. I believe Camp 3 was where the flumes from Rainy, Black and North lakes joined above Green Point.
There are some great details here. You can see the pile of firewood ready to stoke the boiler of the steam donkey. The donkey has a nice whistle, and you can see the spools of wire rope which would operate the cranes to move the logs around.
The donkey was located conveniently next to the flume. We know the log flumes above Green Point were more like a series of locks, where logs could be floated from one chamber to the next down to the mill. Apparently this was because the grade was relatively mild– and perhaps the water was limited.
Tags: Camp 3, flume, Green Point, Kingsley Reservoir, logging, Stanley Smith, steam donkey
Dale Nicol
It is great detail and nice to see none of these logging/processing guys appear to have been injured. It’s well known all of the jobs were very hazardous and dangerous.
nels
Never see any overweight people in this age and employment.
nels
Dale’s comment reminds me of seeing logger-fallers with their pants cut off at the ankle or above to prevent getting cuffs caught on debris when avoiding a falling tree.
nels
Curious if loggers had to travel up and down flumes to break up log jams, or did they release logs with time between each log. A jam seems like would throw logs out of the flume ot create a pile difficult to break up. Or dangerous.
Arthur Babitz
The flumes to this point functioned more like canals. They would float the logs from one gate to the next, rather than run a constant river of water. This was because the grade was low. Below Green Point they had a constant flow with logs swept along with the current. In both cases I think logs were guided into the flume one at a time.