Article: Logging - Notes about Logging in Michigan

Logging in Michigan can be categorized into three types of trees:

• Pine
• Cedar (usually along swamp land)
• Hardwoods

Pine could be floated in rivers to reach mills, either locally located or along the Great Lakes shore. Hardwoods generally did not float and used railroads after pine was cut.

Logging railroads used narrow-gauge railroads, which were usually built as cheaply as possible, and close enough to replace collecting logs by wagon or sleigh. 

Railroads made year-around cutting and hauling of logs practical, enabling the mills to operate all year long. They also made it possible to ship hemlock bark from the woods to tanneries to make tannic acid. 

The State of Michigan designated railroad land grants in the odd-numbered sections in townships just west of the principal meridian, and within one mile east of it. The railroads were granted all land for six miles on both sides of their tracks. Lands designated as swamp lands was not included in railroad grants and was sold by the government even more cheaply than $1.25 per acre. Usually railroads wanted to get their money out of land and timbe quickly to pay for railroad building and sold land to lumbermen.

Railroad land grants were made by the federal government to finance building of railroads in certain locations. The railroad proposed for this grant was from south Hillsdale County to Lansing and to Traverse Bay (Amboy, Lansing & Traverse Bay), but the route was only built from Jackson to Lansing and on to Saginaw, Bay City and Mackinaw.

Time Line

1870. Most timber located near big rivers had been cut, necessitating railroads to carry out timber far from rivers. This changed the lumbering industry from being river-aligned to railroad-aligned. [LEW]

1870. Michigan was producing ¼ of the nation's lumber.

1880's. Many believed that Michigan could never run out of timber to cut. The closing of the mill at Deward in 1910 marked the end of the big time pine cutting era, but many tracts remained.

1900. New lumber operations started after 1900 did not use narrow gauge railroads. It became cheaper to use standard gauge, which did not requiring transloading (from narrow gauge to standard gauge cars) for shipment. [LEW]

1905. After 1905, no large tracts of timber remained available in the Lower Peninsula. [LEW] Some mills could be kept running profitably with logs cut by jobbers on small tracts and hauled by railroad as far as 200 miles to a sawmill. [LEW]

1931. When Ross and Wentworth finished cutting virgin hardwood about 1931, marking the end of that era.