North Country History with Rob Burg
Your podcast on the Forest History of the Great Lakes Region. The forests of the Great Lakes have been home to people for centuries and have provided great resources and wealth, shelter, food, and recreation for many. But in the wake of these uses, the region has been environmentally damaged from deforestation, fire, and erosion, and are still recovering to this day. I will be your guide for exploring the forests and sharing stories of the forests and the people who have called them home.
About Rob Burg: Hi! I'm an environmental historian specializing on the forest history of the Great Lakes Region. I am a mostly lifelong Michigan resident and studied at Eastern Michigan University for both my undergraduate degree in History and graduate studies in Historic Preservation. My 35-year professional life has mostly been in history museums, including the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, the Michigan History Museum, and the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. I began my environmental history career with managing both the Hartwick Pines Logging Museum and the Civilian Conservation Corps Museum for the Michigan History Museum system, directing the Lovells Museum of Trout Fishing History, archivist for the Devereaux Memorial Library in Grayling, Michigan, and as the Interpretive Resources Coordinator for the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska. I am proud that the first person to ever call me an environmental historian was none other than Dr. William Cronon, the dean of American Environmental History.
North Country History with Rob Burg
The Labor of Logging, Part 2: River Driving and Boom Companies
In this second part of the Labor of Logging, I look at the labor involved with the Spring River Drives and the use of Boom Companies. The labor was the most important part of the log drives, without the men working the rivers, the logs would have never made it down the rivers to the sawmills. The drives could be very dangerous, with many men seriously injured or killed. I share a first-person account of Elmer Nolan about the danger of breaking rollways and river driving on the Tittabawasee River in the 1880s. Then we take a look into the workings of a log boom company that would control the entire driving operations on a river. Using the Menominee River Boom Company of Marinette, Wisconsin as an example, we learn of the stratification of a river drive operation and how the various jobs were broken down and performed. Last, we look at one of the most popular lumberjack songs, "The Jam at Gerry's Rocks" and how the loggers and river drivers kept the memory alive of their friends who were lost on the river drives.
Episode Resources:
Burke, Fred C. Logs on the Menominee: The History of the Menominee River Boom. Menasha, WI: Banta Publishing Co., 1946.
Nolan, Herbert. Logging the Tittabawassee: In Memory of Camp Sixteeners. 1939. Reprinted in 1970 and by Printer's Devil Press, Tawas City, MI in 2005.
Rickaby, Franz. Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era. Originally published by Harvard University Press, Boston, 1926. Revised edition by University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2017.
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