Driving Utah's Rivers: Working Water in the West

A log jam on the Bear River. Note the man sitting on the pile of logs in the center left of the image. Utah State Historical Society, C-331 fd. 3, no. 1.

Driving Utah’s Rivers: Working Water in the West

BY SARA DANT

On July 25, 1877, in four simple declarative sentences, the Deseret News summed up a man’s life under a “Drowned” heading in the “Local and Other Matters” section of the paper, sandwiched in-between notices of a horse that had to be put down and a meeting of the Twenty-first Ward. “On June 20th,” it reported, “at Coe and Carter’s tie camp, Weber Cañon, George Carter was accidentally drowned, in the Weber River. An inquest was held over the remains, by a jury, before Mr. James McCormick, Coroner of Summit County. The verdict was that deceased was accidentally drowned while attempting to wade the Weber. From papers found among his effects it appears that Carter was formerly of Montreal, Canada.” 1

George Carter was a “river hog” in territorial Utah’s important but often overlooked tie and log driving industry, and on that day his life likely hinged on a single decision made instinctively and reflexively, drawn from his accumulated experience guiding timber to market on the interior West’s rivers. Amid the grinding, crashing roar of thousands of raw logs and rough-cut ties boiling down the Weber River in northern Utah that June, Carter would have maneuvered himself through the adrenaline-fueling chaos for twelve to sixteen hours a day. But on that morning, Carter made a fatal miscalculation. Yet while Carter’s life and final moments may be lost forever in the past, the significant and substantial economy that employed him should not be so ephemeral in the historical record. 2

In the arid West, water is the essential element. In addition to providing sustenance, the West’s rivers were also important highways of timber commerce and trade—working water that facilitated territorial settlement and economic development. Yet in Utah’s story, this fascinating aspect of water history has long remained obscured. Log driving originated in Europe, and immigrants to North America brought the practice with them. 3 Wood was a vital, indispensable resource and early pioneers used it to build, roof, and heat their homes and cabins; fence livestock in (or out); construct furniture; raise barns; tie railroads; make charcoal in kilns and for smelters; timber mines and road tunnels; fabricate bridges; and erect temples and stores and buildings. It was the fabric of life. In the Central Rocky Mountain West, white settlement and the coming of the railroad expanded tie and log driving in part because rivers were a logical and inexpensive timber conduit in a region devoid of significant roads. 4

It should come as no surprise that tie- and log-driving enterprises—the business of acquiring this elemental commodity—were crucial to the personal and fiscal success of some early settlers. While historians have documented extensively the boom-and-bust economies of the West’s other extractive industries such as mining, ranching, timber, and railroads, the centrality of the tie and log drive economy to the development of the interior West has garnered only passing mention, if at all. 5 Yet as the history of the Weber River—as well as that of the Provo, Bear, Blacks Fork, Green, and numerous other rivers throughout Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho—demonstrates, between the 1850s and 1900 especially, tie and log drives were fundamental to the settlement success of the region. 6 This, then, is the story of the Intermountain West’s other extractive economy. And a river runs through it.

Getting Out the Cut

Although Brigham Young brought the Mormon pioneers to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1847 in part to escape the United States and the persecution they had encountered at the hands of their fellow Americans to the east, the Saints were soon swept back into the national fold, and both those in and outside the LDS church began the earnest search for economic possibility. As part of his “land law,” Young and the church promoted communalism and governing policies that assured public access to and use of Utah’s streams, rivers, wood, and timber. 7 In 1852, this ideal was codified in territorial law, which proclaimed that the county courts had “control of all timber, water privileges, or any water course or creek, to grant mill sites and exercise such powers as in their judgment shall best preserve the timber, and subserve the interest of the settlements, in the distribution of water for irrigation, or for other purposes.” 8 Indeed, as a later irrigation economist argued, that “no monopoly in either land or water developed in the early days was due to the fact that the church leaders were constantly on guard against it.” 9

A map of rivers and watersheds in northern Utah and southwest Wyoming, 1896. Created by and courtesy of McKenzie Skiles.

In September 1852, armed with these ecclesiastical and legal blessings, Robert Gardner and his brother made the first recorded commercial survey and assessment of the “weaber [sic] for timber and floating purposes.” He “found the River good for floating” and also noted “some beautiful land and extensive range for stock” in the canyon. The men found similarly favorable conditions along the Provo River, which Gardner characterized as “nearly as large as the Weber,” and “as handsome a stream for floating purpose as could be desired.” Gardner’s diary described the various types of timber available, their sizes, and stated that the rivers both had sufficient flows to sustain a saw mill, “plentiful” trees, and flows “large enough in times of high water to float timber from points many miles back in the mountains.” 10 Although the archeologist James Ayres suggests that “1850s and early 1860s logging activity was sporadic and of a relatively minor nature” in the Uintas (e.g., the Upper Bear and Blacks Fork rivers), Gardner’s reconnaissance presciently foretold the future uses of the Weber and other rivers of northern Utah as highways of timber commerce. 11

Of the four major rivers in northern Utah—Weber, Provo, Bear, and Blacks Fork—the Weber has both the largest drainage area and consequently the largest average flows. 12 Like the other three, the Weber River’s genesis lies high in Utah’s Uinta Mountains, in the northwest section of the range in a drainage basin formed by snow-capped Mt. Watson, Notch Mountain, Reids Peak, Bald Mountain, the Notch Mountains, and the Hayden Peak Range. From its headwaters, the Weber River winds for 125 miles, west to Oakley, Utah, then northwesterly through Summit (seventy miles), Morgan (twenty-five miles), and Weber (thirty miles) counties to its final destination in the Great Salt Lake. Its major tributary is the Ogden River, which joins the Weber River approximately twelve miles upstream from the mouth. Other tributaries, such as the East Canyon, Lost, Chalk, Beaver, Echo, and Silver creeks, also augment the Weber’s flow along its course so that it ultimately accounts for approximately one-quarter of the lake’s total in-flow. 13

Significantly, by the 1850s, the United States began planning construction of a transcontinental railroad that could link raw materials in the West to factories and consumers in the East. Under the direction of the War Department, surveyors canvassed the West for suitable routes and passes for the Pacific Railroad, one of which was Lieutenant E. G. Beckwith’s 1853–1854 exploration of the Wasatch Range, including the Weber, Bear, and Green rivers. His report indicated that both the Weber and Bear rivers offered passage through the range and that the monthly mail route from Independence, Missouri, already utilized mule-pack trails through Weber Canyon. In April 1854, Beckwith estimated that the “river at this season of the year (not yet swollen by the melting snows of the mountains) is thirty yards wide, by from one to three feet in depth, flowing with a rapid, powerful current.” Beckwith’s party proceeded up the canyon along the treacherous trails perched on the “craggy” sides “so steep that a single mis-step would have precipitated both mule and rider into the foaming torrent, hundreds of feet below us.” Approximately eight miles upstream, near the conjunction with “Ben Simons Creek,” Beckwith marveled at “the finest grazing district we have seen in Utah,” while the ravines had “limited amounts of cedar, fir, and pine” but were “difficult of access.” 14 Overall, Beckwith judged the Weber Canyon a suitable route for the railroad and, on April 9th, he made a similar reconnaissance of the Bear River.

By the 1850s and 1860s, settlers along the lower course of the Weber, in places such as Uinta (or, Easton and East Weber), Morgan, and along the Provo River had established more than one hundred sawmills in various parts of Utah to process logs cut up in the canyons and floated down the rivers. 15 Similar activities occurred on the Ogden River to the north. 16 One biography of the Ogden pioneer Lorin Farr, for example, details how groups of men ascended Ogden Canyon in search of desirable timber. They would fell the trees, mark and cut them into logs, and then “float them down the Ogden River for retrieval”: a process “particularly effective during spring floods of the river.” Men then retrieved their logs for processing at Farr’s sawmill—Farr received half of the logs as compensation for his work—and sold them for an estimated ten dollars per hundred feet. 17 This use of the river was economical for a number of reasons, but it also allowed sawyers to avoid the rather steep tolls assessed on roads such as that through Ogden Canyon; there, during the 1860s, travelers paid one dollar for a loaded wagon, fifty cents for an unloaded wagon, and a quarter for mounted horseback passage 18 In nearby Morgan County, on the Weber River, sawyers felled logs and hauled them by oxen or floated them down the river to the sawmills. 19 On the Weber River, flows usually began rising in March with peak flows occurring in May and occasionally into June and then tapering off to consistent levels for the remainder of the year. 20

On July 1, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act into law, authorizing the expenditure of federal funds to build a transcontinental railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Because of the Civil War (1861–1865), southern states were not in the Union and so the transcontinental railroad followed a more northerly route. The Union Pacific (UP) expanded westward from Omaha, while the Central Pacific built eastward out of San Francisco, ultimately joining together at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. As part of their incentive to build, the railroads received alternating sections of land alongside the tracks. Their exclusive rights to prime timber lands complemented their position as monopolistic buyers for ties on the North Slope of the Uintas. 21

To penetrate the Wasatch Range, the railroad passed through Weber Canyon, and the entire construction process brought income and jobs into the territory. The utility of proximal forests was immediately evident. The 1864 UP survey and report by Samuel B. Reed described the mouth of the Weber River as “120 feet wide, and from four to six feet deep, being swollen at the time of the survey [June] by melting of snow on the mountains.” Reed also suggested that “a limited supply of timber can be obtained in the [lower] cañons for cross ties and bridge purposes” and stated that the grade from Devils Gate to the mouth ( just under thirty miles) is “22 96 /100 feet per mile.” Above Devils Gate, the river’s grade steepens, and Reed noted that “there is a large tract of pine timber, suitable for railroad purposes, accessible from this point.” Reed also explored and surveyed the Bear and Green river drainages and reported that the headwaters of the Bear contained “large tracts of [timber], suitable for railroad purposes, that can be rafted down Bear River to the line.” The Green River also boasted “a large tract of pine timber,” from which “cross ties can be obtained . . . and rafted down Green River to the line, to build the road between Green and Bear Rivers.” 22

The high costs for and large number of ties required to build the railroads inspired entrepreneurial companies and tie hacks to find the most economical means to deliver the greatest number of ties at the best possible prices, both for the men who performed the hard and dangerous work and for the railroad companies eager to keep their profits high. 23 The solution that readily emerged was to eliminate the most costly aspect of tie-supply—overland transport— and replace it with the free labor of the region’s rivers. One Wyoming timberman compellingly demonstrated to UP contractors the feasibility of floating logs from Chambers Lake down the Laramie River: “you have merely to drag to this side and float them down to the railroad line.” It worked. Crews of tie hewers (or tie hacks) cut and sled-hauled ties during the winter of 1867– 1868 and piled them on the ice of the Laramie, waiting for the spring thaw to flush them downstream in what would become, according to the historian William H. Wroten Jr., one “of the many scores [of tie drives] that were to run the Laramie and other rivers of the Central Rocky Mountain region in years to come.” These drives could be profitable, indeed. Gilman and Carter, for example, paid their suppliers thirty-five to sixty cents per tie and then received one dollar to $1.30 for those same ties from the UP’s financing arm, Credit Mobilier. In his research, Wroten discovered that as the demand for ties escalated, they poured in “from the forests along the Little and Big Laramie Rivers, the North Platte, the Green, Black’s [sic] Fork and Bear Rivers.” During the 1868 season, six hundred men were working in the Green River forests and “over 200,000 ties were floated down the Green River alone.” The myriad workers, businessmen, sawmill owners, tie hacks, and others associated with timber harvests and tie trade infused a positive money flow into local economies. As Wroten concludes, “the tie was considered to be the most important product of the Rocky Mountain forests until after the turn of the century.” 24

In 1868, Brigham Young contracted with the UP to grade the route from Echo Canyon to the Great Salt Lake, and numerous subcontractors and entrepreneurs began logging intensively along the Wasatch Range to supply the railroad with ties and timber. 25 The demand was significant; the UP, for example, laid between 2,300 and 2,640 eight-foot ties per mile. 26 At the end of 1868, the Union Pacific line was complete to Evanston, Wyoming, and by November, ties valued at more than $3,000 were arriving at Echo City to build the tracks through Weber Canyon, and the railroad was consuming thousands of board feet of timber each month. 27 One estimate compiled in July 1869, stated that just at the mouth of Weber Canyon, “planks furnished for bridges” amounted to 23,000 board feet “at 4 cts. per foot at the mill or 6 cts at the bridges.” 28 Advertisements for “Choppers and Hewers” appeared in local papers, and the Deseret News reported in August 1868, “Ties are being got out in the vicinity of the Bear river, and other places.” 29 One of those “other places” was the Green River, where J. W. Davis and Associates recorded the delivery to the UP of more than 24,000 board feet of “clap ties in and on the banks of Green River.” 30 Another was the Logan River where, beginning in 1868, logs were floated into the town of Logan and then hauled to local sawmills. 31

By the late 1860s, as a result of the transcontinental railroad, timber harvesting intensified on the Bear River as well. Independent contractors cut on both railroad-owned and federal lands and sold directly to the UP. 32 Ayres states that “moving timber products to the railroad was ordinarily by floating, 30 miles or so, either down the Bear or Blacks Fork Rivers. This method was routine until about 1930, when trucks came into use.” 33 The historian L. J. Colton corroborates the use of this mode of transportation, concluding that “most of the timber in the form of saw logs, ties, props, and cordwood was floated to the market or point of manufacture down the Bear River or in a flume. Large numbers of men were employed, and there were, of course, brawls, injuries, drownings, and other activities that would be associated with this type of operation.” 34

Tie and log driving, whether on the Weber, Bear, or other rivers, could be a dangerous and deadly enterprise, as George Carter’s tragic 1877 story demonstrates, but it also offered a kind of heroic celebrity, taking on the tenor of a modern sporting event as “crowds thronged the banks to see the drivers ‘ride the boom.” 35 The practice was common throughout the Rocky Mountains and typically thirty to one hundred men like Carter worked the larger drives, which commenced when the rivers began to rise in late spring. One Wyoming cowboy colorfully described the “tie-punchers” as “never dry from the time drive starts till the last tie reaches the boom.” 36 During the drives, the “river hogs” waded in the water for hours at a time, since boats were often too treacherous amid the thousands of ties or logs, and others waited along the shore to deal with log jams. 37 Downstream booms, often at the conjunction of the river and the railroad, captured the drive, which was then loaded onto wagons or railroad cars. Although some men lost their lives in this dangerous occupation, this aspect of the timber industry provided many jobs and was an important element of the economies of Wyoming and Utah during this period. 38 Similar drives were also taking place in Colorado, where during the winter of 1868–1869, for example, “over 200,000 ties were cut and floated down the Poudre.” 39 In 1872, the Colorado territorial legislature went so far as to legally protect the rights of log drivers to use the rivers, stating that it was “lawful for any person or persons to float any and all kinds of timber, such as saw logs, ties, fencing poles or posts, and firewood, down any of the streams of this Territory” so long as they posted a bond sufficient to cover any damages. 40

A saw mill in the Uinta Mountains, Summit County, Utah, 1870. Wikimedia, marked NARA 516920.jpg.

In Utah, the Morgan County sawmills were also important employers and drivers of the territorial economy as key suppliers of transcontinental railroad ties; a wagon-load of ties delivered to Echo, for example, earned a respectable ten dollars a day. Many of these mills were operating in Hardscrabble Canyon, a tributary of East Canyon whose confluence lies about five miles up from Morgan. 41 Tie hacks could typically produce around twenty ties during an eight-hour period. 42 In Morgan, the Weber River floated some logs to the mill pond of Abiah Wadsworth. Indeed, it wasn’t until the turn of the twentieth century that a wagon road was finally cut through the perilous Narrows section of Weber Canyon, where the UP hit its one thousand milestone from Omaha, Nebraska. 43

The transcontinental railroad emerged from Weber Canyon in March 1869 and joined with the Central Pacific at Promontory on May 10th. 44 Timber harvest and river driving throughout the region continued, however. That same year, for example, leaders of the LDS church organized the Coalville and Echo Railroad to transport coal from mines above Coalville to Echo, then to Ogden via the UP and on to Salt Lake City via the Utah Central. 45 In his study of the railroad tie industry in the central Rocky Mountains between 1867 and 1900, Wroten argues that “the money spent by railroads, tie contractors, and tie hacks meant much to the business men of the tie cutting centers.” One of the major concerns early on in the building of the railroad was the excessively high cost of ties, primarily due to transportation costs. The vice-president of the Central Pacific lamented that team-hauled ties in the Wasatch were costing “more than $6” per load. Once the railroad reached Cheyenne in November 1867, though, the areas around Henry’s Fork, Blacks Fork, Bear, and Weber rivers became sources for railroad ties and telegraph poles, and camps filled with thousands of lumberjacks mushroomed up in the mountains. By the fall of 1867, the UP was paying oxen teams up to nine dollars a day. 46

One of the challenges of tracing the business records of these companies and individual tie hacks and drivers is the convoluted and interwoven connections between contractors and subcontractors. Even for the most prominent of tie operations, that of Coe and Carter (at first called Gilman and Carter), whose main routes were between Nebraska and Salt Lake City, little information exists beyond generalities. Coe and Carter continued to supply ties well after the completion of the transcontinental railroad, however; in 1881, for example, they furnished somewhere in the range of 500,000 and 700,000 ties to the Oregon Short Line and the Utah and Northern roads. Surveyor Samuel Reed later estimated that it had taken 4.2 million ties to build the 1,900 miles of transcontinental railroad track from Omaha to California. 47 Thus, while it is impossible to quantify the exact economic contribution that tie and log drives made to the Weber River specifically and to the northern Utah region in general, the extensive use of rivers as highways of timber commerce establishes them as substantial influences.

Track replacement programs and new spur lines continued to create a steady demand for ties throughout the region, allowing outfits like Coe and Carter to function as profitable tie suppliers until the turn of the century. During the 1870s, for example, the Laramie River experienced yearly drives “of from 35,000 to 250,000 ties,” according to Wroten, and in 1877, the Bear River had a three-mile drive that was valued at $250,000. These timber needs continued into the 1880s, when, in 1885, the UP placed an order for 100,000 ties to be delivered along the line between Cheyenne and Ogden. In 1888, the Denver, Rio Grande Western purchased 100,000 ties, “which were floated down the Green River to a point where the railroad crossed that stream.” “In 1895,” Wroten notes, “Coe and Company started a tie drive on its journey from the Uinta Mountains to Church Buttes [Wyoming], a distance of about one hundred miles down the Black Fork.” 48 And archeologist Ayres argues that although logging in the northern Uintas slowed considerably after 1869, “a minor, local boom occurred between 1912 and about 1930 when the Standard Timber Company of Omaha, Nebraska, entered the area.” 49

For northern Utah, the 1870s saw the beginning of the Park City mining boom, the construction of the Summit County narrow-gauge railroad between Echo and Coalville, the expansion of the Utah Southern Railroad, and a proposed Utah Eastern Railroad from Coalville to Salt Lake City. 50 The UP spur and a narrow gauge track built by the Utah Central both passed through Wanship on their way to Park City, acting as a conduit of coal, timber, and silver. Park City fortuitously boomed as a mining town at precisely the same time that the transcontinental railroad became connected. All of these endeavors required large infusions of timber, which the Weber Canyon and its river provided. 51 In her autobiography, Olive Emily Somsen Sharp described her father Henry J. Somsen’s work in the 1870s “getting timber from the high mountains east of Coalville and Kamas, Utah”: “the men worked from the Provo River, north to the Weber River, where they floated the ties down the Weber to Echo.” 52 The Deseret Evening News corroborated this description in mid-1877, reporting that “railroad ties that have been cut in East Weber Mountains are being floated down the Weber River in large numbers to Echo.” 53

Robert E. Strahorn’s colorful 1877 travel narrative of his passage along the UP also detailed that “over 1,000,000 feet of timber, and some 200,000 railroad ties were cut from the neighboring mountains in 1878. Ties are floated down the Bear river, thence down to the Pacific Railway.” 54 Strahorn’s travelogue describes tie drives throughout the region, indicating the commonality of the practice. The evidence from local newspapers substantiates this. The following year, in 1879, in addition to the Weber and other tie drives, the Provo City Semi-Weekly Enquirer reported that “the railroad tie business is assuming massive proportions here. Thousands are being floated down the Provo river,” and the Logan Leader estimated that “between 100,000 and 200,000 ties have been floated down Logan river this season.” 55 The Logan Leader estimated that “Coe and Carter have spent about $60,000 here this season.” 56 Echoes of Yesterday, a Summit County centennial history, also describes the Weber Canyon tie drives of 1879 and beyond, noting that both ties and lumber were floated “down the river” and “taken out at Wanship.” 57

Yet the toll from this tie and timber trade was high. In the 1870s, for example, residents of Woodland, located approximately five miles south of Kamas, were actively engaged in “mining timber” to fill Park City’s insatiable demands for wood. “In two or three years,” however, “all of the mining timber was cleared out of this district,” forcing the men either to “seek another line of work,” get out even larger timbers, or relocate their focus to the Provo River and its canyons. 58 In the long run, this level of timber harvest was unsustainable and would cause the tie drives to diminish in economic significance.

Nevertheless, in the succeeding decade, tie and log drives continued to utilize the Weber and other rivers of northern Utah. 59 In the summer of 1880, the Salt Lake Herald ran UP “wanted” advertisements for ties to complete the eagerly awaited Summit County Line between Coalville and Park City. 60 By that October, fuel wood was “getting scarce,” prompting the Salt Lake Weekly Tribune to suggest that “there are vast forests along the Weber river, from which the wood can be floated down to the depot at Wanship.” 61 One tie provider, Alva A. Tanner, wrote in his autobiography that “in the spring of 1880, a narrow gauge Railroad was begun from the mouth of Echo Canyon to Park City” and he and three other companions “went to the head of Weber river that spring to make ties. They were to be floated down the river. We was to put them on the bank ready to dump in the river. We found timber quite handy and made good wages.” Tanner estimated that “a hundred men were in the timber”; he specifically mentioned “Alexander Canyon,” a tributary of Silver Creek, “to the South West of Wanship,” and noted that the ties “had to be made earley, not later than July 20th, so as to float them in high water.” 62

In January 1881, once the railroad was finally completed, the prospects for supplying the mines with timbers and tunnel props seemed bright; the Salt Lake Weekly Tribune reported Park City’s optimism: “at the head of the Weber river are forests from which we expect to draw our supply for years to come, at a moderate cost. The hardy woodman will repair thither, and having cut a few thousand feet will float it down the river to the depot at Wanship.” 63 One of those suppliers was Samuel Liddiard, who wrote in his journal, dated 1881: “I went to Wanship there we built a boom across the river to hold the ties as they was driven down the river . . . there was 42000 ties.” 64 That summer, “wanted” advertisements for tens of thousands of ties and telegraph poles appeared in Provo’s Territorial Enquirer, and in November the Salt Lake Daily Herald noted that “Dan Jones & Co. have quite a large contract to furnish ties. . . . They commenced putting these ties in the [Provo] river, near Heber, about a week ago.” 65 The thirty-mile float numbered in excess of 13,000 ties, and Jones continued his operations into December of that year, given the mild weather and high flows in the Provo. 66 Advertisements for “100 wood choppers to cut ties on Weber River” for the UP also appeared at that same time in the Deseret News and the Logan Leader. 67 Jones was also working in the Weber River drainage where, according to the July 27, 1881, Territorial Enquirer, he was “already favorably known to tie cutters and haulers, having for the past two years employed men and teams for the same purpose in the vicinity of Weber river and given entire satisfaction, not only to the railroad companies, but to those whom he employed.” He advertised wages from two dollars to $2.50 per day. 68 Jones’s impressive efforts on the Provo River continued into the spring of 1882, and advertisements for tie cutters continued to attract applicants throughout the Wasatch and Uintas. 69

One of the men who worked the tie business for the UP on the Weber and Provo rivers in 1882 was Henry Goddard. Summarizing his words, the historian Lyndia Carter writes that “the ties were run down the Weber River to Wanship for the line from Coalville to Park City.” 70 Olive Somsen corroborated this kind of activity in the region when she stated that her father, Henry, was “the agent of Coe and Carter who had the contract for tieing the Oregon Short Line for its entire length and during the years of 1881 and 1882 he delivered for the company to the railroad ties sufficient, from the mountains of Bear River valley, for one half of the entire route, including that part between Granger and American Falls.” 71 One newspaper reported in early spring of 1882, that “‘Sam’ Hamilton, manager of Coe and Carter’s tie camp up on Black’s Fork . . . expects to begin the drive in June, and will run 80,000 broad-gauge ties, 18,000 narrow-gauge ties, 60,000 mining props and 25,000 mining ties—all of which will be landed at Granger.” 72 These tie drives operated throughout the decade; the largest drive, in either 1886 or 1887, saw 350,000 ties going down the Provo River. 73

Ambitious railroad boosters also continued to view the forests and rivers of the Wasatch and Uintas as prime sources of ties; in September of 1887, J. B. Rosborough of Salt Lake argued for a new railroad line connecting the Central Pacific and the Utah Southern with the Pacific Coast and suggested that “ties could be had from the forests on Bear River, floated down that stream, and delivered on the line of the road on the lake shore by water.” 74 Moreover, in its 1887 end of the year accounting, the Park (City) Record boasted that the twenty-eight-mile Echo & Park City Branch of the UP “is the best paying feeder the Union Pacific has. . . . Next spring when contractor Geo C. Kidder booms his timber and wood down the Weber river. . . . It will require 1000 cars to transport the timber and wood up to Park City.” 75 Park City’s almost insatiable appetite for timber also prompted S. F. Atwood of Kamas to note in 1888 that “several thousand cords of wood have been chopped in the Provo and Weber cañons, and banked on the rivers read to be floated in the spring to Hailstone’s Ranch on the Provo, from whence it will be hauled by team to Park City and Wanship, where it will be transferred by rail.” 76

As the rivers began to rise that spring, the May 22, 1888, edition of the Salt Lake Herald reported that “a great many men are employed getting out railroad ties upon the bank of the [Provo] river; So soon as the stream is at sufficient hight the ties will be floated down near the railroad.” 77 In June, the drive down the Provo River stretched from its “head” at Heber to its “tail end” at Hailstone. 78 Interestingly, in July, Dan Jones was arrested for hitting a tie rival on the head with a rock, proving that the dangers of the tie drives were not solely confined to the mountains and rivers. 79 Meanwhile, as late as August, Kidder’s drive on the Weber River remained marooned near Peoa because of low water. 80

The “enormous” 1888 Provo River tie drive was lucrative—more than one newspaper article indicated that it covered eighteen miles of river, contained at least 100,000 ties, and would “put about $50,000 in circulation in Provo”—but it was also problematic: “there is some trouble anticipated in regard to interference with irrigation.” 81 The tie and log drives down the Weber and other rivers may have initially been economical and exciting, but by the end of the century, they were also controversial. Farmers increasingly complained that the rafts of logs careening down the rivers destroyed delicate irrigation systems and caused excessive damage. 82 As early as 1882, the Provo City Council had received complaints that “the city damns had been damaged by parties floating ties down Provo river,” and in June 1888, none other than Reed Smoot, the future religious and political leader, appealed to the Provo City Council to stop the “heavy drive of ties down the Provo River this month” out of concern that it would “cause great damage to irrigation and machinery interests by disturbing the bed of the river, destroying dams, etc.” 83 Moreover, many of these tie and log entrepreneurs had been illegally cutting and harvesting timber on public lands. 84 In other words, what had once been cost-efficient use of the rivers had sometimes become destructive and costly. And what was good for city dwellers was beginning to take priority over what was good for those who utilized the mountains.

Smoot was a powerful rival for the tie drivers and, as the Daily Enquirer noted, by June 1888, the city council had convened to address the “danger” that the tie drives presented. If “compromise” was not possible, the article continued, the city was authorized to join with “the parties interested in the protection of the river and irrigation matters . . . in suit at law.” 85 By 1890, Smoot’s concerns had become law, which stipulated that anyone “who shall raft or float timber or wood down any river or stream of this state and shall allow such timber or wood to accumulate at or obstruct the water gates owned by any person or irrigation company . . . is guilty of a misdemeanor.” 86 It is important to note here, however, that the dispute was not an attempt to privatize the rivers but rather to preserve their greatest good for the greatest number function.

Dan Jones (now “Judge Dan Jones”), whose 1888 Provo River tie drive had caused Smoot and his colleagues such consternation, continued to run drives down the Provo the following year, although as of June, low water had stranded 80,000 of his ties “for a couple of months to come.” 87 In essence, Jones was forced to wait until “the irrigating season” had concluded to complete his drive, an illustration once again of the communal use of this timber conduit. 88 Jones’s luck ran out, however, when a huge fire broke out in late July nine miles east of Kamas, “destroying the finest belt of timber there is in this Territory,” burning more than 10,000 of his ties and 15,000 ties owned by S. S. Jones and Alfred Cluff, and threatening another 40,000 ties of Jones and Cluff. The Utah Enquirer reported that “150,000,000 ties could have been cut from the timber destroyed.” A simultaneous fire on the South Fork of the Provo threatened an additional 30,000 of Dan Jones’s ties, and the newspaper lamented his and others’ “great loss.” 89 By August, the Salt Lake Herald reported that the Provo was “strewn with railroad ties” on account of low water, but noted two sentences later that “crops have yielded fairly well in this county.” 90

An 1888 railroad tie drive on the Provo River. Dan Jones, the manager of the project, stands in the center. Other identified members of the party include Josiah Smith (left) and Dan Vincent (extreme right). Utah State Historical Society, Larson Studio Collection, photograph no. 62.

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Utah was making the significant transition from territory to state. Although its rivers would continue to supply timber from the mountains to various new and existing railroads and expanding communities along the Wasatch Front, there were also many challenges: economic dislocation from the worst depression the United States had experienced up to that point; declining timber supplies in the mountain valleys above the Weber and Provo rivers; and continued objections to tie and timber drives by irrigators, manufacturing interests, and others. On January 23, 1890, Mark H. Bleazard stated in his diary that he had “helped some men load a car and a half of lumber until the train come in the afternoon,” indicating that the train was running from Wanship and carrying wood by that date. 91 By the summer of that year, rail lines also stretched from Salt Lake City to Park City (the Salt Lake & Eastern) and from Ogden to Grand Junction (RGW). 92 That spring of 1890, a “tie contractor for the extension of the Utah Central division of the Union Pacific” had posted notice seeking “500,000 ties” and “1,000 good tie makers.” 93 Not surprisingly, by June 1890, the indomitable Judge Jones was “floating down some 90,000 railroad ties from the headwaters of the Provo River” for the UP and paying wages estimated at $40,000 for the season. 94 A traveler’s report corroborated the Jones drive, noting that “quite a business in supplying mining timbers and logging is done by the people of Provo Valley. . . . Great quantities of lumber and railroad ties have been floated down the Provo this year, and many ties were piled in places along the stream, said to be for the extension of the Utah Central.” 95 On the Weber River watershed, “the building boom” reportedly continued “with unabated vigor” during the summer. 96 Several months later, in January 1891, the Kidder Brothers were still “shipping in a large supply of mining timbers for which they find a ready market.” 97

Indeed, as the 1891 season began, tie-driving in the region looked promising. In May, news reports of J. L. Atkinson’s log drive on the Bear River down to Evanston appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune, while the Provo Evening Dispatch reported in June that “Mr. S. S. Jones . . . was successful yesterday in contracting with the R.G.W. officials for 100,000 ties. These ties are to be used in the construction of the Provo-Tintic Short Line, and are to be gotten out at once. Mr. Jones says the contract will be the means of putting between four and five hundred thousand dollars in circulation this summer.” 98 The Provo River was busy that summer. The Salt Lake Daily Tribune also reported that “the Utah Central—John M. Young’s road—has 100,000 railroad ties now in the Provo river, which were floated down from the headwaters of that stream. These ties are scattered along the river a distance of about twenty-five miles and will be taken out mostly at Davis’s and at Moon’s, two well-known crossing places on the river.” 99 That same June the Park Record observed that the Kidder Brothers’ Park City mill received the last of their “Wanship wood this week. The lot comprised 13000 cords and has been arriving steadily for more than a year at the rate of from two to four cars per day.” 100 Atkinson ran another log drive down the Bear River the following June, and a July 16, 1892, report from the Weber River from a traveler who journeyed all the way up to Holiday Park, noted that “about fifteen miles [up-river] from Peoa, is a saw mill and boom of saw logs, some 10,000 of them being bunched up there.” The traveler estimated that there was “fully a million feet at this one point, and at $25 per m, the snug sum of $25,000, or near that, will be taken in.” 101 These “large quantities” of timbers were making their way to Park City mines by early fall, as the Park Record stated. 102 In neighboring Idaho, a log drive of “nearly four million feet” concluded in September 1892 along the Payette River, although it was “unusually difficult and expensive this season.” 103

By 1893, the nation was fully in the grip of economic depression, and the Panic of 1893 sent the Union Pacific Railroad into bankruptcy for the second time. It was only a temporary setback, however, as four years later the company had reemerged financially and continues to operate to the present day. Despite UP’s economic woes, proposals for new roads continued to receive favorable reception and promote the ability of the Weber and other river drainages to supply adequate timber, sustain the local economy and Park City’s mines, and create significant demands for timber. 104 Indeed, as the Park Record, under the heading “Park Float,” duly noted in late December: “considerable lumber is coming to town at the present time from the saw mills on the Weber river above Wanship. Most of it goes to the mines.” 105 This would continue to be the case in 1894. 106 In May 1895, S. S. Jones, who would soon become mayor of Provo (1889–1890), was “sending men to the head of the Provo river, Wasatch county, to cut timber. He expects to bring down logs enough to saw 100,000 feet of lumber” reported the Salt Lake Daily Tribune and as late as October, Jones was still advertising for “ties wanted.” 107 Jones was evidently so enamored of the business that he even composed a poem, entitled “Adown the Provo River,” in which he mused, “Year after year the spring flood tide brings down thousands of railroad ties to make and mend the great highway of traffic through the State.” 108

Yet Smoot’s earlier concerns about the destructive nature of the ties drives was also in evidence. In January 1890, for example, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that “the ties now being floated down Provo River have choked the flow on the northwest edge of town so that the water has overflowed the banks, and now covers much of the farmland in that vicinity. There is liable to be trouble unless the tie men clear a passage without delay.” 109 And an August 1891 travelogue lamented that “the great drawback” to Wanship of late was that a Weber River tributary, “Silver Creek—once as clear and pure as could be found in the mountains” was being fouled “by the mills and concentrating works at Park City, which are situated on the headwaters of the stream.” 110 Danger also lurked in May 1894, when the Daily Enquirer reported that “the large tie boom of S. S. Jones, at Provo bridge, threatens giving away. A number of ties did escape to the lake last evening. Mr. Jones has men constantly watching the timbers.” 111 Similar concerns on the Ogden River quashed the dreams of one “Mr. Evans,” who sought to build an iron foundry and smelter that utilized the “thousands of acres of wood” at the river’s headwaters to produce his plant’s charcoal. His hopes of floating the wood down the Ogden River, however, conflicted with plans for a dam, and it was “this hitch in the affairs of Weber county that has driven Mr. Evans to Box Elder county.” 112 Evans’s conundrum reveals how competing interests over commercial water uses were often resolved in favor of the greatest public good and—while tie driving was still a possible use of the region’s rivers—other uses had also emerged and were beginning to take precedence.

This mountain scene of fishing along a stream shows the effects of clear-cut logging. Church History Library, Charles W. Carter, C-286.

In addition to concerns about property destruction caused by the tie and log drives, the rate at which timbers were being cut and removed from the Weber, Provo, and other watersheds had also begun to cause alarm. In February 1895, for example, at the monthly meeting of the Utah Forestry Association, Dr. H. J. Faust proposed the creation of a state park encompassing “the headwaters of the four rivers known as the Provo, the Bear, the Weber and the Duchesne . . . so that the timber could be protected—which timber is fast being destroyed by timber men being employed from time to time in cutting ties and other timber.” The primary justification for such an action Faust argued, was “to protect the snows that fall so deep in the winter time and which afford us water for irrigation.” The worst offenders, Faust continued, were “the tie men [who] destroy more than any other class of lumber men.” While Faust understood that this would cause economic hardship to the “tie men,” he argued that “the most good to the greatest number of people should be observed.” 113 The following month, the Utah Legislature memorialized its support for Faust’s proposal to protect the four watersheds “with a view to increasing the water supply for irrigation purposes.” 114

Driving Beyond Statehood

On January 4, 1896, Utah became the forty-fifth state in the union. Among the many issues the new state had to grapple with was the reality of its aridity. Concerns about a water supply sufficient to slake the thirst of Utah’s growing population and its burgeoning agricultural economy were obviously at the heart of Faust’s proposal, but voices other than his had begun to join the chorus. In January 1896, Samuel Fortier, a professor at the Agricultural College of Utah (later Utah State University), wrote an extensive article for Salt Lake Tribune in which he detailed the rainfall totals in and agricultural potential of various parts of the state. Noting that the Weber River drainage covered 1,600 square miles, Fortier wrote with some concern that the previous year (1895) had marked the lowest flows since records had been kept; a similar situation existed on the Provo River. For Fortier, the irrigation development along the Bear River was the model to be emulated: “then it was a sagebrush desert . . . now is to be seen in autumn the rich dark green of lucerne fields.” 115 While this vision of making the desert bloom echoed Brigham Young’s sentiments from a half-century earlier and was certainly not new, by the late nineteenth century, irrigated agriculture was increasingly becoming the primary economic driver of the region. These uses of the region’s rivers were not necessarily incompatible with tie and log drives that utilized waterways to transport timber to end users, but increasingly, irrigation interests took precedence.

Yet it was still the railroads that would transport this agricultural produce to eager consumers across the country, and those railroads still needed ties. In April 1896, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that “rapid progress is being made on the preparations for the Rio Grande Western’s extension to Park City,” later called the Heber Creeper. Moreover, “broad gauge railroad ties are in demand. The Salt Lake & Pacific is getting out a large number in the Weber canyon, but the supply is not equal to the demand and the company is looking around for another point of timber supply.” Not only was the Weber’s supply insufficient, but “the canyons near Provo have been productive of good timber for years, but the contractors have been recently deserting this region for other parts of the state.” 116

One man who worked the timber in the summer of 1896 was Seymour Bertie Allred, who was “cutting saw logs and mine props” on the Ham’s Fork, a tributary of the Blacks Fork and Green rivers. In his memoirs, Allred recalled that “the work consisted of chopping, trimming, and logging off, then snaking the logs to the bank of the stream where they were piled to await the high water in the Spring.” He noted that during that winter, “a timber crew” “hauled about eight thousand timbers down to the larger stream edge, preparatory to floating them.” The following April of 1897, Allred was “back on the job to help float the hundred and sixty-five thousand logs that I had helped to cut and bank the year before.” Allred provided a rare and fascinating glimpse into the mechanics of a big log drive, which he described as “twelve hours a day of wading, swimming, and sometimes, the carrying of logs from the leads where the back water had floated them.” He was pleased, however, to be “drawing top wages” of “three dollars a day,” which he received for manning the boat that took men out to the log jams. Allred’s other job was to sweep the rear of the drive for stray logs: “this required much paddling across the stream, darting into small channels, watching all nooks and corners where a log might be pushed and become caught.” As the water warmed, “the men all became more daring,” and some of them rode logs in as they floated in the river, a feat Allred said “requires an experienced hand.” 117

A Mill Creek log drive. Note the individuals working the drive in the top left portion of the image. Utah State Historical Society, C-331 fd. 3, no. 11.

That same year, in 1897, Colonel N. W. Clayton, the manager of the Deep Creek Railroad who was planning to expand southwest out of Salt Lake City to the mining regions of western Utah and Nevada, expressed his confidence in the expansion of that road, eventually even to Los Angeles; and the Salt Lake Tribune reported that “there is plenty of available timber that can be cut into ties to be delivered on the line of the UP. Most of these localities are on the Park City branch of the UP, one contractor at Wasatch being ready to supply 75,000 ties in short order.” The article also noted that “ties have been floated down the Sevier,” “and thousands have been taken out of the Provo river.” 118 To ensure that these ties were not poached from state lands, Utah had passed a law in 1896 stating that “the cutting and hauling of timber from leased agricultural or grazing lands to saw mills is prohibited.” 119

By 1898, however, the Utah & Pacific had begun to bring in ties from Oregon to fill demand, while the RGW was still able to utilize “ties which were stacked up along the Provo river to near the headwaters six or seven years ago.” 120 In 1899, the Oregon Short Line contracted with the Rock Springs Lumber Company for 250,000 ties to be floated down to Green River, Wyoming, “with the spring rise of the river.” 121 The Rock Springs drive, hailed as “the biggest tie drive ever made in Wyoming,” also included “200,000 ties for the Union Pacific Railroad company, and 200,000 props for the Rock Springs coal mines.” 122 The company also anticipated another drive of saw logs for the following year because low water in the river had thwarted its passage. 123

By the turn of the twentieth century, much of the work being done on the Weber and other rivers along the Wasatch and Uinta ranges had shifted from primary use as a conduit of timber to that of providing irrigation and municipal water supplies. 124 By 1903, for example, the number of canals and ditches drawing water from the Weber River had ballooned from about a hundred at the time of statehood to more than 150. 125 The railroad’s ability to haul in cheap timbers from Oregon also cut into the tie business in the region. 126

This decline was evident in Albert Potter’s thorough 1902 survey of the state’s forests for the federal Bureau of Forestry. While his purpose was to assess the potential for various areas to be included in new national forest reserves, his detailed descriptions provide excellent insight into the state of the forests at the turn of the twentieth century. Potter’s account describes the Wasatch, Gunnison, and Sevier Forest Reserves and the impact of mining, sawmills, and stockyards on the forests, and provides a historical outline of specific sawmills in service and their vicinity to rivers and streams. In almost every canyon of the Weber and Provo rivers, Potter noted the remnants of the previous years’ tie and timber harvests: old sawmills, camps, and areas “cut out.” 127 Top-grade timber was a rare commodity in many mountain valleys by the turn of the century, and sheep ranching had fully occupied the high country. 128 Indeed, the evidence for the overuse of the mountain areas by various extractive enterprises is extensive and provides another explanation for the decline of tie driving on the Weber and other northern Utah rivers. In his examination of Utah’s environmental history, the historian Dan Flores writes that by 1881, “and continuing thereafter with mounting fury and frequency, the now deteriorated mountain watersheds . . . began periodically to send tons of water, soil, and boulders rolling into the streets and irrigation works of the towns below them.” Despite the creation of eleven national forests by 1910, “grazing and logging pressure continued to be too intense on the Wasatch. By the 1920s a widespread land collapse had begun.” 129

As a sampling of proximal rivers over the first decade of the twentieth century reveals, however, the use of tie and timber drives like those in Utah continued throughout the region despite the toll they were taking on the land. 130 In 1901, the bar was raised higher yet when some 400,000 ties went down Wyoming’s Green River for the UP. 131 Two years later, in 1903, the Payette River bore “over 3,000,000 feet” in the Prestel log drive. “A force of thirty men is at work on the drive,” reported the Ogden Standard, “and everything possible is being done to hurry it along.” 132 In June 1910, another Payette log drive was underway. 133 And the March 19, 1911, edition of the Denver Post not only contained a rather striking photo of a drive of thousands of ties clogging the Medicine Bow River, “one of the water highways down which thousands of ties are driven every spring,” but also noted that this practice had been in place “since the early ‘90s” and that cutters were paid “14 cents Per Tie.” The article also provides helpful information about the economics of tieing at this time:

The minimum price now paid for standing timber for this purpose is $3.50 per thousand board feet. The average tree will give from three to four ties, and thirty ties are considered equivalent to 1,000 board feet of timber. In this manner the cost per tie to the contractor who sells to the railroad is approximately 11 to 12 cents. When the tie is delivered to the railroad, however, it costs the purchaser from 55 to 65 cents. 134

Clearly, the contractor was still making the big bucks while the tie hack provided the labor.

In 1913, even after decades of natural resource exploitation, the Utah State Bureau of Immigration Labor and Statistics noted that the potential for tie and log drives remained in northern Utah, noting that there were “approximately three billion feet of timber” in the Uintas and stating that the Wasatch Range “contains considerable merchantable timber.” Furthermore, the report suggested that a stand of one hundred million feet of Englemann Spruce and Lodgepole Pine was at the ahead of the Provo River—and that those resources could readily make their way downstream for the sake of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad: “In addition to saw timber, this tract will furnish a large amount of railroad ties and mining props for which there is always a good local demand. The river has already been driven on a small scale. A drive of fifty miles will land the logs at Heber City where there is an excellent site for a large saw mill.” Elsewhere, the report details the existence of an “extensive tract of timber” on the northern slopes of the Uintas and at the headwaters of the Blacks and Smiths forks of the Green River. The report notes the commercial value of the timber: how it constituted 150 million feet of material for sawing, ties, and mining props, and how it was “one of the best railroad tie-mining prop tracts in the State, since the material can be driven direct to the railroad.” 135

Officials from the newly created national forests substantiated the perspective offered by the 1913 report. In a 1911 article, Daniel F. Seerey, “a lumberman attached to the local District Office of the Forest Service,” stated that the headwaters of the Provo River offered “one of the finest bodies of native timber which I have seen in the state . . . the logs can be driven down the Provo river to Heber at a very small outlay for river improvements.” Seerey went on to argue that hauling timber from Oregon, either for ties or mining timbers, made little sense: “thousands of dollars annually go out of the state for lumber purchased from Oregon. If there were a number of large mills locally, this money would be kept within the state.” 136 The other development that supported these positive views of the continued profitability of timber harvest in the region was that Forest Service management of the timber resources also included reforestation programs that began, slowly, to replenish what had been cut out in earlier times. May of 1915, for example, saw “the planting of 100,000 trees on the north slope of Slate creek” near Kamas, and systematic timber surveys were in place by the 1920s. 137 Thus, even in the early twentieth century, the rivers of the Wasatch and Uinta ranges were susceptible to tie drive usage, which was still considered a customary practice for transporting logs and timber from the mountains downstream to end users.

By April 1912, some enterprising businessmen had set out to re-realize this profit potential in the region and began floating “about 500,000 feet of saw timber” down Rock Creek, a tributary of the Duchesne River, to a new saw mill in Duchesne City. “Preparations are under way to bring timber down both the north and south forks of the Duchesne river and down the Strawberry.” 138 Notably, by May 1914, the Park Record could report that “most of the timber” from the

In fact, even as late as the 1920s, tie drives still occurred in the region’s rivers: in the spring of 1920, the Standard Timber Company prepared “to bring down 100,000 ties from the upper reaches of the [Blacks Fork] river” and, according to the local forest ranger, “is already planning for an energetic campaign of tie cutting, to begin immediately after the spring drive.” 141 Not surprisingly, the next year the state engineer, Frank C. Emerson, documenting the drive’s destruction of irrigation works along the Blacks Fork, “was impressed by the magnitude of the damage and has taken the matter up with the Standard company.” 142 Another report noted the Standard Timber Company’s use of upper portions of the Provo and Weber rivers, as well as from Beaver Creek, came down on sleds, rather than the river drives of years past. “Keefer and Thompson drove ties down Beaver creek to Wanship five or six times 25 or 30 years ago [1884–1889], and at about the same time S. S. Jones was driving the Provo to Provo City, and George Kidder the main Weber to Wanship.” 139 The wording of the article suggests that while tie driving on the Weber was no longer the standard practice, it was still a possibility and one that was certainly in use on neighboring rivers. In July 1915, for example, the Timberman, a monthly magazine that discussed the timber industry, detailed the operations of the Standard Timber Company, which was organized in 1913. In 1915, the Standard cut and drove more than 1,000,000 feet of timber, most of it coming from Blacks Fork and Mill Creek, a branch of the Bear River. The company had a contract “to furnish practically all the ties” the UP would use in the Intermountain region and, accordingly, about half of the 1,000,000 feet would go for railroad ties; the rest would become mining timber. The Timberman clearly saw the forest as a harvestable resource, noting that the Standard “expects to finish cutting all the available timber in Mill Creek this year and then will turn its entire attention to Blacks Fork where there will be several years’ cutting. What was more, the Forest Service also benefitted from the cutting, as the Timberman noted: “The sale of this lumber nets the forest service $35,000 of which $13,000 will go to state schools and roads under the law appropriating 35 per cent of the proceeds of the sale of timber from the national forests to these purposes.” 140

In fact, even as late as the 1920s, tie drives still occurred in the region’s rivers: in the spring of 1920, the Standard Timber Company prepared “to bring down 100,000 ties from the upper reaches of the [Blacks Fork] river” and, according to the local forest ranger, “is already planning for an energetic campaign of tie cutting, to begin immediately after the spring drive.” 141 Not surprisingly, the next year the state engineer, Frank C. Emerson, documenting the drive’s destruction of irrigation works along the Blacks Fork, “was impressed by the magnitude of the damage and has taken the matter up with the Standard company.” 142 Another report noted the Standard Timber Company’s use of the West Fork of the Smiths Fork (tributaries of the Blacks Fork and thus Green River) in Wyoming between 1927 and 1935 to “drive ties,” indicating that the practice was still an acceptable use of the river. 143 Indeed, even as late as 1938, the Laramie River bore 350,000 ties down river, but after 1940, the UP refused to accept stream-driven ties. 144

The utilization of the Weber and other rivers in the region to support the commercial demand for tie and log drives was evident and significant between the 1850s and 1940, although the heaviest use certainly occurred during the development and expansion of the railroads and mines, the twin pillars of industry in Utah, between the late 1860s and the turn of the twentieth century. 145 Interestingly, much of the perceived drop-off in lumbering may have come about as a result of the transition to federal forest control; the Forest Service kept better records and also began a more systematic effort to promote “conservation through utilization” and management of the resource “as a tie forest,” as evidenced by industry revival on the North Slope of the Uintas, for example. One other challenge and possible explanation for the decline of tie and log driving is that by the early twentieth century, while North Slope creeks could still float a tie or hewn lodgepole, they were simply inadequate for moving massive raw saw logs to the mills downstream, although there were proposals to “improve” the rivers to accommodate such drives. 146

A stone near Oakley, Utah, memorializing George Carter that reads “Drowned in Tie Drive in Weber River Spring of 1877 Henry Sompson Foreman[.]” Courtesy Cullen Battle.

As this history demonstrates, the tie and log drives that occurred on the Weber River and other Utah and regional waterways throughout this period were an essential element of the larger railroad, mining, and timber economies of the West. 147 Thousands of men like George Carter found work and wages as river hogs and tie hacks, which in turn accelerated the development and expansion of the interior West. As the historical archaeologist Christopher Merritt observes, “forgotten cabins, rotting back into the ground from which their logs once sprung, are the tangible reminders of this lost facet of western history.” 148 In this arid environment, the region’s rare rivers provided highways of water upon which, for a time, an entire industry depended. The financial contributions of this other extractive endeavor, as well as the sheer volume of and extended time period over which these tie and log drives occurred, demonstrate its substance and significance to the settlement success of Utah as a territory and a state.

Notes

The author wishes to thank Cullen Battle, Herbert Ley, Vincent Fazzi, and three anonymous reviewers. Research of this kind would not be possible without the extraordinary resource provided by Utah Digital Newspapers (digital newspapers.org). 1. “Drowned,” Deseret News, July 25, 1877; Richard W. Sadler and Richard C. Roberts, The Weber River Basin: Grass Roots Democracy and Water Development (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1994), 99.

2. Henry Sompson (or Somsen) later laid a commemorative headstone to Carter on the left bank of the Upper Weber, a little below Smith and Morehouse Creek. See Brian Maffly, “Public Access on Weber River Hinges on Pioneer Log Drives,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 7, 2015, 4:57 p.m., September 13, 2020, archive.sltrib.com; Google Maps, accessed October 12, 2021, goo.gl/maps/WRbZokXgn6eKJUwX7. Ted Cannon, “Tragedy on Weber River,” Deseret News, July 27, 1965, repeated the spelling as “Sompson”; Olive Emily Somsen Sharp, Autobiography, MSS A 2038, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter USHS); Marie Ross Peterson, Echoes of Yesterday: Summit County Centennial History (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1947), 230; David Hampshire, Martha Sonntag Bradley, and Allen Roberts, A History of Summit County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1998).

3. Ralph Clement Bryant, Logging: The Principles and General Methods of Operation in the United States (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1913); Earl E. Brown, Commerce on Early American Waterways: The Transport of Goods by Arks, Rafts, and Log Drives (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010); see also, Robert E. Pike, Tall Trees, Tough Men (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967) (New England); Malcolm Rosholt, The Wisconsin Logging Book: 1839–1939 (Amherst, WI: Palmer, 1980) (Midwest); William H. Wroten, “The Railroad Tie Industry in the Central Rocky Mountain Region: 1867–1900” (PhD diss., University of Colorado, 1956) (Rocky Mountains); Bill Loomis, “Shanty Boys, River Hogs and the Forests of Michigan,” Detroit News, April 11, 2012, accessed September 16, 2020, blogs .detroitnews.com/history/2012/04/11/shanty-boys -river-hogs-and-the-forests-of-michigan/.

4. Michael K. Young, David Haire, and Michael A. Bozek, “The Effect and Extent of Railroad Tie Drives in Streams of Southeastern Wyoming,” Western Journal of Applied Forestry 9, no. 4 (1994): 125; see also Robert G. Rosenberg, “Woodrock Tie Hack District, Bighorn National Forest Cultural Resource Management Plan” (Sheridan, WY: Bighorn National Forest, 1999), accessed May 9, 2019, wyoshpo.state.wy.us /pdf/TieHackCampsBighorns.pdf; Lyndia Carter, “Tie Drives Down the Provo River: Consolidated Sources List,” n.d., copy in author’s possession.

5. A notable exception to this oversight is Christopher W. Merritt, “Wooden Beds for Wooden Heads: Railroad Tie Cutting in the Uinta Mountains, 1867–1938,” Utah Historical Quarterly 84, no. 2 (2016): 102–117.

6. Bryant, Logging; Brown, Commerce on Early American Waterways; Wroten, “Railroad Tie.”

7. B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), 3:269; Brigham H. Roberts, “History of the Mormon Church,” Americana, February 1912, 158–89; see also Sara Dant, “The ‘Lion of the Lord’ and the Land: Brigham Young’s Environmental Ethic,” in The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays in Mormon Environmental History, ed. by Jedediah S. Rogers and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019), 29–46; Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean L. May, Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 57. A brief version of the history of the uses of the Weber River appeared earlier as Sara Dant, “Going with the Flow: Navigating to Stream Access Consensus,” in Desert Water: The Future of Utah’s Water Resources (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2014), 144–59.

8. Territory of Utah Legislative Assembly, Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials Passed by the First Annual, and Special Sessions, of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah, Begun and Held at Great Salt Lake City, on the 22nd Day of September, A.D. 1851, also the Constitution of the United States, and the Act Organizing the Territory of Utah (Great Salt Lake City: Brigham H. Young, 1852), section 39; see also John Swenson Harvey, “A Historical Overview of the Evolutions of Institutions Dealing with Water Resource Use, and Water Resource Development in Utah, 1847 through 1947” (master’s thesis, Utah State University, 1989).

9. Wells A. Hutchings, Mutual Irrigation Companies in Utah (Logan: Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, 1927), 15.

10. Robert Gardner, Robert Gardner Journal, 1852 September, MS 6063, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter CHL). More specifically, according to a 1902 US Bureau of Forestry survey, available timber during this period in the Wasatch and Uinta ranges’ watersheds included Engelmann spruce, blue spruce, Douglas fir, red fir (locally known as red pine), alpine fir, white fir, limber pine, lodgepole pine, ponderosa pine (locally known as bull pine), and cottonwood. See Albert F. Potter, Diary of Albert Potter, July 1902–November 22, 1902, Forest Service Intermountain Region, United States Department of Agriculture, Ogden, Utah (hereafter FSIR); also available as a transcription through Utah State University Forestry Extension, accessed October 21, 2021, forestry.usu.edu/files/potter-diaries.pdf. It should be noted that Potter’s historical tree identification does not always correspond with current taxonomy. For more comprehensive identification, see Michael Kuhns, A Guide to the Trees of Utah and the Intermountain West (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1998).

11. James E. Ayres, “Historic Logging Camps in the Uinta Mountains, Utah,” in Forgotten Places and Things: Archeological Perspectives on American History, ed. by Albert E. Ward (Albuquerque: Center for Anthropological Studies, 1983), 251; James E. Ayres, “Standard Timber Company Logging Camps on the Mill Creek Drainage, Uinta Mountains, Utah,” Proceedings of the Society for California Archeology vol. 9 (1996): 179–82; see also “Early Days in Ogden,” Deseret Weekly, February 23, 1895, for a discussion of early settlement.

12. While irrigation diverts significant quantities of these rivers’ waters today, historical stream flow data indicates that the Weber River’s flow regime was sufficient to sustain the tie and log drives from the 1850s to the 1890s. At the time of statehood in 1896, the Weber River’s maximum flow (mf ) at the mouth of Weber Canyon was 7,980 cubic feet per second (cfs), and had averaged 5,590 cfs since 1890, when record keeping began. Significantly for log driving, the mean monthly flow in May (May mmf ) was 3,172 cfs in 1896, and had averaged 3787 cfs since 1890. The Weber’s flows significantly exceeded the flows of other prominent log driving rivers in Utah. For example, the Provo River’s mf at the mouth of Provo Canyon in 1896 was 4150 cfs, and had averaged 2490 since 1890. Similarly, the Provo’s May mmf in 1896 was 1166 cfs, and had averaged 1384 cfs since 1890. Later records for the Upper Bear and Blacks Fork show that the two rivers had lower flows than either the Weber or the Provo. J.V.B. Wells, Compilation of Records of Surface Waters of the United States through September 1950, pt. 9 “Colorado River Basin,” p. 296, and pt. 10 “The Great Basin,” pp. 131–32, 173– 74 (Washington: GPO, 1960). See also U.S. Geological Survey, National Water Information System, accessed October 21, 2021, help.waterdata.usgs.gov/.

13. “Map of the Weber River Drainage Basin,” in Jay D. Stannard, “Irrigation in the Weber Valley,” in Elwood Mead, Report of Irrigation Investigations in Utah (Washington, DC: GPO, 1903), 176, plate 12. See Union Pacific Railroad Company, Geography of the Union Pacific Railroad: Part 4—Utah, “Instruction Pamphlet; Unit Number A.5 (Union Pacific Railroad Company, 1910) for a general description of the Weber River; and “Weber and Its Tributaries,” Deseret Weekly, September 19, 1891, for a contemporary de- scriptive discussion of the area; S. McKenzie Skiles, Utah and SW Wyoming, 1896, 1cm=9 km (Salt Lake City: Utah Stream Access Coalition, 2013), copy in author’s possession. During the twentieth century, the United States Bureau of Reclamation began impounding the Weber River’s water as part of the Weber Basin Project; it built two dams along the Weber’s course, Echo Dam (1931) and Wanship Dam (1957), to facilitate irrigation along the burgeoning Wasatch Front. See for example Christopher J. McCune, “Weber River Project,” 2000, usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php ?id=210, and “Weber Basin Project,” 2001, usbr.gov/ projects/pdf.php?id=209, both at Bureau of Reclamation, accessed May 10, 2019.

14. E. G. Beckwith, “Explorations and Surveys for a Railroad Route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean: Report of Explorations for a Route for the Pacific Railroad, On the Line of the Forty-First Parallel of North Latitude” (Washington: A.O.P. Nicholson, 1854), 10–11.

15. “Biographies–Lorin Farr Part 16,” Winslow Farr Sr. Organization, 2, accessed September 13, 2012, winslowfarr.org, copy in possession of author and UHQ editors; Mark E. Stuart, “Uintah,” in Utah History Encyclopedia, uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/, and “A Brief History of the City,” uintahcity.com /history.htm, both accessed October 22, 2021; Forest Service Intermountain Region, US Department of Agriculture, Forest and Range Resources of Utah; Their Protection and Use (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, 1930); Milton R. Hunter, ed., Beneath Ben Lomond’s Peak: A History of Weber County, 1824–1900 (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1966), 169, chapter 12; see also Alfred Lambourne, Alfred Lambourne Writings, circa 1912, MS 4110, CHL; Charles S. Peterson and Linda E. Speth, A History of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, September 25, 1980, submitted to the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 111–21, accessed October 22, 2021, exhibits. lib.usu.edu/items/show/12565; Douglas M. Bird, “A History of Timber Resource Use in the Development of Cache Valley, Utah” (master’s thesis, Utah State University, 1964), 58–64, September 14, 2020, digitalcommons.usu.edu.

16. “Biographies–Lorin Farr Part 16,” 12.

17. “Biographies–Lorin Farr Part 16,” 12; see also F. Ross Peterson and Robert E. Parson, Ogden City, Its Governmental Legacy: A Sesquicentennial History (Ogden, UT: Chapelle, 2001), 31; Hunter, Beneath Ben Lomond’s Peak, chapter 13; Roberts and Sadler, The Weber River Basin, 125; Ralph B. Roberts, “Sawmills,” 1944, Special Collections and Archives, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, Utah (hereafter MCUSU); Peterson and Speth, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 121.

18. Roberts and Sadler, The Weber River Basin, 125.

19. See for example Linda H. Smith, A History of Morgan County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1999), 188; Elnora Arave Cox and Frederick James Wadsworth, “Biography of Abiah Wadsworth,” December 21, 1979, accessed May 16, 2013, leavesona tree.org/histories/Biography%20of%20Abiah%20 Wadsworth.pdf; Mrs. William Chadwick Stoddard, “History of Morgan County,” Morgan County (UT) News, May 2, 1947.

20. Wells, Compilation of Records of Surface Waters, pt. 9 “Colorado River Basin” and pt. 10 “The Great Basin.”

21. Peterson and Speth, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 126.

22. Samuel B. Reed, “Report of Samuel B. Reed of Surveys and Exploration from Green River to Great Salt Lake City” (December 24, 1864), 2–5, 11, accessed October 22, 2021, library.centerofthewest.org/digital /collection/MS414/id/1550/; see also Thomas C. Durant, Report of Thomas C. Durant to the Board of Directors in Relation to the Surveys Made Up to the Close of the Year, 1864 (New York: William C. Bryant, 1866); Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 5.

23. F. B. Hough, “Report on Kinds and Quantity of Timber Used for Railroad Ties,” in Nathaniel H. Egleston, Department of Agriculture Report on Forestry vol. 4 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1884), 119–73.

24. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 26–28, 35–37, 93–156; see also Robert E. Gresswell, Bruce A. Barton, and Jeffrey L. Kershner, eds., Practical Approaches to Riparian Resource Management: An Educational Workshop (Billings, MT: US Bureau of Land Management, 1989), 189; Young, Haire, and Bozek, “The Effect and Extent of Railroad Tie Drives”; Joan T. Pinkerton, Knights of the Broadax: The Story of the Wyoming Tie Hack (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1981).

25. Smith, A History of Morgan County, 259; see also Union Pacific Railroad Contract with Brigham Young, 1868, box 89, fd. 7, Brigham Young Office Files, CR 1234, CHL; Salt Lake Daily Telegraph, June 20, 1868; Thomas M. Stevens, “The Union Pacific Railroad and the Mormon Church, 1868–1871: An In-Depth Study of the Financial Aspects of Brigham Young’s Grading Contract and Its Ultimate Settlement” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1972).

26. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 3.

27. Brigham Young, 1868–1869, UPRR receipt for ties, reel 96; UPRR construction estimates, box 88, fd. 4; 1869–1870 financial reconciliation documents for railroad, box 89, fd. 19, all in CR 1234, CHL.

28. Brigham Young, UPRR final estimate, 1869, box 88, fd. 7, 13, CR 1234, CHL.

29. “200 Choppers and Hewers,” Deseret News, February 3, 1869; “Progress in Echo and Weber,” Deseret News, August 19, 1868; see also “Utah,” Daily Alta California, November 7, 1868; “Work on the Union Pacific Railroad,” Sacramento Daily Union, November 28, 1868.

30. Account Records of J. W. Davis and Associates, 1868– 1870, 17, Levi O. Leonard Papers, MSC0159, Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries, accessed May 9, 2019, digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/compound object/collection/leonard/id/32716/rec/6.

31. Bird, “A History of Timber Resource Use,” 21–22. Lyndia Carter, “‘Tieing’ Utah Together: Railroad Tie Drives,” History Blazer (July 1996), accessed May 9, 2019, historytogo.utah.gov/railroad-tieing/.

32. Ayres, “Historic Logging Camps,” 251, and “Standard Timber Company Logging Camps”; see also L. J. Colton, “Early Day Timber Cutting Along the Upper Bear River,” Utah Historical Quarterly 35, no. 3 (1967); Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 14; Greg Gordon, When Money Grew on Trees: A. B. Hammond and the Age of the Timber Baron (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), 134–50.

33. Ayres, “Historic Logging Camps,” 252, and “Standard Timber Company Logging Camps.”

34. Colton, “Early Day Timber Cutting,” 203; see also Robert E. Strahorn, To the Rockies and Beyond . . .” (Omaha: New West Publishing, 1879), 85; and Peterson and Speth, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 127, for details on the Hilliard flume. Wood was also used for charcoal; Stephen L. Carr, The Historical Guide to Utah Ghost Towns (Salt Lake City: Western Epics, 1972), 59–60; C. Gregory Crampton and Steven K. Madsen, “The Navigational History of Bear River: Wyoming, Idaho, Utah,” Elusive Documents, Paper 74 (1975), accessed April 9, 2021, digitalcommons.usu. edu/elusive_docs/74.

35. “Utah’s First Forest’s First 75 Years” (Washington, DC: United States Forest Service, 1972), 13. For the dangers, see Deseret News, June 24, 1868; “Drowned,” Salt Lake Daily Telegraph, June 20, 1868; James Henry Martineau, An Uncommon Common Pioneer: The Journals of James Henry Martineau, 1828–1918 (Provo: Brigham Young University, 2008), 149.

36. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 213–14, 218–20.

37. Colton, “Early Day Timber Cutting,” 203–204. The men rarely chose to cross the rivers by walking across the logs as this was considered far too dangerous, but jams sometimes left no other alternative. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 276; “Local and Other Matters,” Deseret Evening News, April 1, November 7, 1878, March 31, 1879; “Local Intelligence,” Chieftain (Evanston, WY), March 8, 1884; Robert E. Pike, “Hell and High Water,” American Heritage 18, no. 2 (February 1967).

38. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 11–15, 218; Sharp, Autobiography, 4; Young, Haire, and Bozek, “The Effect and Extent of Railroad Tie Drives,” 126; Peterson and Speth, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 125–26.

39. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 75; see also Gresswell, Barton, and Kershner, Riparian Resource Management, 189; for a fictionalized version of tie hacking in the High Uintas, see Roy Lambert, High Uintas Hi! (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1964).

40. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 270, 280. See also Compiled Laws of Utah 1888, Land Laws of the United States, Sec. 440: “All navigable rivers, within the Territory occupied by the public lands, shall remain and be deemed public highways. . . .” This is a US statute (R.S. 2476) applicable to the territories and reprinted in the Compiled Laws of Utah. While it is not a law passed by the territorial legislature, it could be used to support the existence of a public right to use all rivers in Utah meeting broad navigability for use standards, such as Colorado’s and others recognized in western states and territories at the time.

41. Smith, A History of Morgan County, 189.

42. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 248.

43. Smith, A History of Morgan County, 190, 260. For an extensive list of the early sawmills operating in Weber Canyon as far up-river as Holiday Park, see Peterson, Echoes of Yesterday, 242. See also “Uinta Mountains and Lumber,” Summit County, Utah, accessed May 9, 2019, summitcounty.org/212/Uinta-Mountains -Lumber.

44. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 20; Don Strack, Utahrails. net, accessed October 25, 2021, utahrails.net.

45. Deseret Evening News, October 26, 1869.

46. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” abstract, 9n, 10, 17; see also Alta Byrne Fisher, “History of Moses Byrne,” The Cardon Families Organization, accessed May 13, 2019, cardonfamilies.org/Histories/MosesByrne.html; Gresswell, Barton, and Kershner, Riparian Resource Management; Peterson and Speth, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 128, 123; see Young, Haire, and Bozek, “The Effect and Extent of Railroad Tie Drives,” for list of dates for tie driving on Wyoming streams.

47. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 15, 22–24, 40n49; Peterson and Speth, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 124; Sharp, Autobiography, 89; Bird, “A History of Timber Resource Use,” 33; Elizabeth Arnold Stone, Uintah County: Its Place in History (Laramie, WY: Laramie Printing Company, 1924).

48. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 41, 14n27, 45, 49, 50n73, 54, 55–56, 59, 137; see also Cache National Forest (Utah and Idaho), “History of the Cache National Forest / prepared by Supervisor’s Office, Dec. 1940,” USU Digital Exhibits, accessed September 14, 2020, exhibits.lib.usu.edu/items/show/12562; Brad Hansen, “Tie Drives in the Bear River Range” (unpublished paper, Utah State University, April 25, 2012), copy in author’s possession; Merlin R. Hovey, “Early History of Cache County,” 1936, MCUSU, accessed September 14, 2020, digital.lib.usu.edu/digital/collection /regreening/id/232; Thomas X. Smith, Account Book, 1879–1881, MS 11241, CHL.

49. Ayres, “Historic Logging Camps,” 252, and “Standard Timber Company Logging Camps.”

50. Strack, Utahrails.net; Edward L. Sloan, ed., Gazeteer of Utah and Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Herald, 1874); Letters to Brigham Young, October 15, 25, 1875, box 104, fd. 22, CR 1234, CHL; Strahorn, To the Rockies, 93–94; Salt Lake Weekly Tribune, May 6, 1880; H.L.A. Culmer, ed., Utah Directory and Gazetteer for 1879–1880 (Salt Lake City: H.L.A. Culmer, n.d); George E. Pitchard, A Utah Railroad Scrapbook (Salt Lake City: George E. Pitchard, 1987), accessed May 9, 2019, utahrails.net/pitchard/pitchard.php.

51. Charles S. Peterson, ed., “‘Book A—Levi Mathers Savage’: The Look of Utah in 1873,” Utah Historical Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1973).

52. Sharp mistakenly referred to construction of the Oregon Short Line, which was not organized until 1881. Sharp, Autobiography, 5; Territorial Enquirer (Provo, UT), May 24, 1879.

53. Deseret Evening News, July 16, 1877; see also Peterson, “‘Book A—Levi Mathers Savage’”; Marie H. Nelson, ed., Mountain Memories: A Book of Remembrance 1848–1986 (Kamas: Kamas Utah Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1986), 105. John Seymour, one of the men who worked the drives, wrote in his journal that “men would jump into the cold water early in the morning and be in and out of the water all day. They followed the logs down the river and would take them out at the boom at Wanship.” Another reminiscence fondly recalled “when the ‘tie men’ came down the [Weber] river in their red flannel shirts and big boots, dislodging the ties from the many jams which they made, sending them floating on down the turbulent stream.” Peterson, Echoes of Yesterday, 229–30. See also Charles T. Pluid, “Logging,” 7–8, Oral History interview by Debbie Pluid, box 2, fd. 27, David Crowder Collection, BYU-Idaho Library, Rexburg, Idaho; “The Railroad Tie Drive on Provo River, 1888,” photograph no. 62, batch 27, box 92, Larson Studio Negative Collection, MSS C 230, USHS; “Life Sketch of Seymour Bertie Allred,” M270.1 A4417a 197-?, CHL; Nephi Anderson, “When the Stove Smoked,” Improvement Era: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association 10, no. 7 (May 1907), 883.

54. Strahorn, To the Rockies, 122.

55. Semi-Weekly Enquirer (Provo, UT), May 24, August 6, 1879; Logan (UT) Leader, “Local Lines,” October 30, 1879; Thomas X. Smith, Loose Leaf Receipts for Total Ties Received and Sent, 1879–1881, fd. 2, MS 11241, CHL; “Local and Other Matters,” Deseret Evening News, November 25, 1879.

56. Bird, “A History of Timber Resource Use,” 33.

57. Peterson, Echoes of Yesterday, 194–95.

58. Peterson, Echoes of Yesterday, 306; see also Lin Floyd, “Brief History of Oakley, Utah, and the William Stevens Family,” 2003, accessed May 9, 2019, famhistory1867.com/stevenshorton.html.

59. Carter, “‘Tieing’ Utah Together”; Forest Service Intermountain Region, Forest and Range Resources of Utah.

60. “Railroad Ties Wanted,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, June 12, 1880; see also Salt Lake Weekly Tribune, October 9, 1880; Territorial Enquirer (Provo, UT), June 26, 1880.

61. “Park City Notes,” Salt Lake Weekly Tribune, October 2, 1880; see also Samuel Liddiard, Journal, 30, A1904, USHS.

62. Alva A. Tanner, A Castout Mormon (Oakley, ID: Selfpublished, 1919).

63. “The Railroads,” Salt Lake Weekly Tribune, January 1, 1881.

64. Liddiard, Journal, 30.

65. “Provo,” Salt Lake Herald, November 2, 1881; see also, Territorial Enquirer (Provo, UT), January 21, 1880, July 27, September 7, October 19, November 2, 1881.

66. Territorial Enquirer (Provo, UT), November 16, December 7, 1881; Salt Lake Herald, December 23, 1881.

67. “Wanted,” Deseret News, December 28, 1881; “Wanted,” Logan Leader, January 13, 1882; see also “Wanted,” Salt Lake Herald, December 9, 1882.

68. “Interesting to Tie Men,” and “100 Men Wanted to Chop and Bank Ties on the Provo River,” Territorial Enquirer (Provo, UT), July 27 (qtn.), September 10, 1881.

69. Salt Lake Herald, February 7, December 9, 1882; “Random References,” Ogden Standard, June 14, 1882; see also Territorial Enquirer (Provo, UT), October 19, 1881, for note that “wood cutters are called for and receive good wages” around Uintah.

70. Carter, “‘Tieing’ Utah Together.”

71. Sharp, Autobiography, 89–90; see also Logan (UT) Leader, “Big Tie Contract,” February 4, 1881, and “Our City and Its Surroundings,” August 1, 1882; Robert G. Rosenberg, “Woodrock Tie Hack District, Bighorn National Forest Cultural Resource Management Plan” (Sheridan, WY: Bighorn National Forest, 1999), accessed May 9, 2019, wyoshpo.state.wy.us/ pdf/TieHackCampsBighorns.pdf.

72. “Local Intelligence,” Chieftain (Evanston, WY), April 29, 1882; see also “Samuel Hamilton Dies,” (Evanston) Wyoming Times, August 29, 1918.

73. Carter, “‘Tieing’ Utah Together”; A. S. Condon, “A Big Wheel,” Ogden Herald, May 16, 1887. This assertion is corroborated by Forest Service Intermountain Region, Forest and Range Resources of Utah, 58; US Geological Survey, Reconnaissance Map: Salt Lake Quadrangle, Polyconic Projection (October 1885 repr. 1930).

74. “Islands of the Desert,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 8, 1887.

75. “Railroad Business,” Park (City, UT) Record, December 31, 1887 (qtn.), and “Railway Rumbles,” February 11, 1888; Lorenzo Stenhouse, Utah Gazetteer and Directory of Salt Lake, Ogden, Provo and Logan Cities, for 1888 (Salt Lake City: Lorenzo Stenhouse [?], 1888).

76. “Scarcity of Timber,” Deseret News, January 11, 1888.

77. “Territorial Topics,” Salt Lake Herald, May 22, 1888.

78. (Provo) Utah Enquirer, June 8 (qtn.), August 24, 1888.

79. (Provo) Utah Enquirer, July 13, 17, 20, 1888.

80. “Peoa Dots,” Deseret News, August 1, 1888; “Peoa Dots,” Wasatch Wave (Heber City, UT), May 4, 1889; see also Charles William Seymour, “Journal and Reminiscences,” ca. 1880–1906, MS 14977, CHL. Peterson, Echoes of Yesterday, 230, indicates that in some years, flows were not sufficient from Holiday Park, for example, to float “great piles” of cord wood; Sadler and Roberts, The Weber River Basin, 99, restates this same idea and likely used this as their uncited source.

81. “Provo Points,” Salt Lake Herald, June 17, 1888 (first qtn.); “Random References,” Standard (Ogden, UT), June 10, 1888 (second qtn.); “Tie Drives in Provo River,” Standard (Ogden, UT), May 20, 1888; “The Tie Drive,” Park (City, UT) Record, June 23, 1888; “Provo Points, Salt Lake Herald, June 23, 1888; “Floating Fragments,” Daily Enquirer (Provo, UT), June 26, 1888; “Provo Points,” Salt Lake Herald, July 22, 1888.

82. Wroten, “Railroad Tie,” 280.

83. Provo City Council, July 3, 1882, Journal of the Proceedings of Provo City Council from October 21, 1878– April 1, 1890, 143; “The Tie Drive Down the Provo River,” and “City Council,” (Provo) Utah Enquirer, June 1, 1888; Deseret News, June 13, 1888.

84. “Timber Suits,” Ogden Standard, July 10, 1886; “Timber Trespass Suits,” (Provo) Utah Enquirer, January 15, 1889; “A Heavy Suit,” Laramie (WY) Daily Sentinel, November 22, 1878, and “Personal, Local and General,” December 18, 1878.

85. “That Tie Drive,” (Provo) Utah Enquirer, June 8, 1888.

86. “An Act to Protect Irrigation Companies,” March 11, 1890, in Laws of the State of Utah, 1890–94 (Salt Lake City: Star Print, n.d.), 21.

87. (Provo) Utah Enquirer, June 7, 1889; see also “Provo Points,” Salt Lake Herald, June 5, 1889.

88. Salt Lake Herald, June 12, 1889.

89. (Provo) Utah Enquirer, August 9, 1889; see also Lyndia Carter, “Of Logs and Men,” [unpublished], copy in author’s possession.

90. Salt Lake Herald, August 30, 1889; see also, “Local Pickings,” Daily Enquirer (Provo, UT), August 30, 1889.

91. Mark Hopwood Bleazard, Diary: 1861–1921, 5, MS 2750, CHL, accessed May 9, 2019, catalog.lds.org/assets /d8f1ff67–2ba0–4705–9c02–9bba7fcc1a45/0/0; see also Salt Lake Tribune, January 9, 1890.

92. Park (City, UT) Record, April 5, 1890; Salt Lake Evening Times, April 8, 1890; Strack, Utahrails.net; “Desirable Changes,” Daily Enquirer (Provo, UT), March 19, 1889.

93. Daily Enquirer (Provo, UT), March 18, 1890.

94. Salt Lake Tribune, June 4 (qtn.), 9, 1890.

95. “Eastern Utah,” Deseret Evening News, July 22, 1890 (qtn.); Daily Enquirer (Provo, UT), August 11, 1890. Note this is likely a reference to the “old” Utah Central line, which had been merged into the OSL in 1889. An extension of that line was underway in 1890 from Milford, Utah, to Pioche, Nevada.

96. Park (City, UT) Record, July 19, 1890 (qtn.), January 24, 1891; see Wells, Compilation of Records of Surface Waters, pts 9 and 10; and Frederick Haynes Newell, Report of Progress of the Division of Hydrography for the Calendar Year 1895, US Geological Survey (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1896), 231–33, for historic stream flow measurements for both the Ogden and Weber rivers.

97. “Park Float,” Park (City, UT) Record, January 24, 1891; see also Robert Schmal and Thomas Wesche, “Historical Implications of the Railroad Crosstie Industry on Current Riparian and Stream Habitat Management in the Central Rocky Mountains,” in Gresswell, Barton, and Kershner, Riparian Resource Management.

98. “News of our Neighbors,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 15, June 19, 1891; Dispatch (Provo, UT), June 3, 1891 (qtn.); see also Daily Enquirer (Provo, UT), May 16, June 27, 1891; Dispatch (Provo, UT), July 11, 1891; Carter, “‘Tieing’ Utah Together”; Steven Samuel Jones Papers, box 1, fds. 7, 11, MSS 1435, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (hereafter HBLL).

99. “Rumbles of the Railroads,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 28, 1891; see also “Provo’s Peculator,” Salt Lake Herald, June 30, 1891.

100. “Park Float,” Park (City, UT) Record, June 20 (qtn.), July 11, 1891; see also Park (City, UT) Record, January 24, 1891, for Kidder ad.

101. “News of Our Neighbors,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 6, 1892, and “Up the Weber River,” July 16, 1892 (qtn.).

102. “Park Float,” Park (City, UT) Record, September 10, 1892.

103. “Progress at Payette,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 19, 1892.

104. “Utah Central Extension,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 28, 1892; see also “Bracing up the Central,” Salt Lake Daily Tribune, June 25, 1894.

105. “Park Float,” Park (City, UT) Record, December 23, 1893; see also Utah Gazetteer 1892–93 (Salt Lake City: Stenhouse, 1892); “Park City,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 1, 1896, for discussion of distribution of goods, including lumber, in Park City.

106. “Park Float, Park (City, UT) Record, October 27, 1894.

107. Salt Lake Tribune, May 22, 1895 (qtn.); “Ties, Ties, Ties,” Evening Dispatch (Provo, UT), October 9, 1895.

108. Box 2, fd. 4, Charles D. Fletcher Papers, MSS 1948, HBLL; see also Lyndia Carter, “Tie Drives Down the Provo River: Consolidated Sources List,” n.d., copy in author’s possession.

109. Salt Lake Tribune, January 9, 1890; see also Daily Enquirer (Provo, UT), January 8, 1890.

110. “Weber and Its Tributaries,” Deseret Weekly, September 19, 1891.

111. Daily Enquirer (Provo, UT), May 16, 1894.

112. “Now for Business,” Ogden Standard, November 10, 1894.

113. “Make a State Park,” Deseret Evening News, February 2, 1895; see also Deseret Weekly, January 12, 1895, 101. Faust had been exploring and laying claim to lakes along the Wasatch on behalf of Salt Lake City since at least 1890; see Daily Enquirer (Provo, UT), August 11, 1890.

114. “The Legislature,” Deseret Evening News, March 11, 1890.

115. “Irrigation,” Salt Lake Daily Tribune, January 1, 1896; see also Samuel Fortier, “Bulletin No. 38—Preliminary Report on Seepage Water and the Underflow of Rivers” (1895), UAES Bulletins, Paper 7, accessed October 26, 2021, digitalcommons.usu.edu/uaes_bulletins/7/.

116. “Ties in Demand,” Salt Lake Daily Tribune, April 28, 1896; see also “Green River Resources,” Salt Lake Herald, January 21, 1897. The Salt Lake & Pacific was never built. Although he did not reveal the source of his timber, in May of 1896, “D. W. Gamble made an offer to furnish 200,000 ties” to the Utah & Pacific; “Branch to Park City,” Salt Lake Herald, May 30, 1896. See Map of Utah, 69.16=1 degree (Rand, McNally, 1895), for a map of railroads at statehood.

117. “Life Sketch of Seymour Bertie Allred,” CHL; see also “The Railroad Tie Drive on Provo River, 1888”; “Local Intelligence,” Chieftain (Evanston, WY), May 13, 1882.

118. “Deep Creek Railroad,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 3, 1897.

119. Laws of the State of Utah (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Publishing, 1896), 251; see also Thomas Donaldson, The Public Domain: Its History with Statistics . . . (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891).

120. “To Improve the Road,” Salt Lake Herald, November 14, 1898; see also “Bids for Track Work,” Deseret Evening News, September 17, 1898.

121. “To Improve the Roads,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 16, 1899.

122. “Northwest Notes,” Wasatch Wave (Heber City, UT), September 15, 1899.

123. “The Big Tie Drive,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 21, 1899; see US Geological Survey, Coalville Quadrangle, Polyconic Projection, 1927.

124. See R. L Polk, Utah State Gazetteer and Business Directory (Salt Lake City: R. L. Polk, 1900), for a discussion of Coalville, Oakley, and Wanship and the businesses in these towns, including lumber purveyors.

125. Fortier, “Bulletin No. 38”; Mead, Report of Irrigation Investigations in Utah; “Map of the Weber River Drainage Basin.”

126. “Great Body of Utah Timber,” Evening Standard (Ogden, UT), July 18, 1911.

127. Potter, Diary of Albert Potter.

128. Charles S. Peterson, “Albert F. Potter’s Wasatch Survey, 1902: A Beginning for Public Management of Natural Resources in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 39, no. 3 (1971): 243–55.

129. Dan Flores, “Zion in Eden: Phases of the Environmental History of Utah,” Environmental Review 7, no. 4 (1983): 333–34; see also Young, Haire, and Bozek, “The Effect and Extent of Railroad Tie Drives,” for discussion of effect tie driving had on riparian zones and fish species in Wyoming.

130. Timber drives were occurring in neighboring Wyoming in 1898, where one sawmill received “a log drive of 1,000,000 feet of timber” and anticipated seven times that amount for the next year; see “Northwest Notes,” Wasatch Wave (Heber City, UT), May 6, 1898.

131. “Record Tie Drive,” Deseret News, August 7, 1901.

132. “Mountain and Coast,” Ogden Standard, September 11, 1903; see also Colton Clark, “Soaked Timber in Idaho’s Clearwater River,” Intermountain Histories, accessed September 16, 2020, intermountainhistories.org/items/show/104.

133. “Log Drive at Emmett,” Deseret News, June 4, 1910.

134. Denver Post, March 19, 1911.

135. State of Utah: First Report of the State Bureau of Immigration Labor and Statistics for the Years 1911–1912 (Salt Lake City: Arrow Press, 1913), 58–60; see also Samuel Fortier, William M. Bostaph, A. F. Parker, The Davis and Weber Counties Canal Company: Engineer’s Reports (Ogden, UT: Davis and Weber Counties Canal Company, ca. 1911), 12. Fortier’s report is dated September 16, 1910.

136. “Great Body of Utah Timber,” Evening Standard (Ogden, UT), July 18, 1911.

137. “Budget of News Is Gathered by a Forester,” Ogden Standard, May 15, 1914; see also, Peterson and Speth, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 136.

138. John R. Wilson, “River Logging Near Duchesne,” Vernal (UT) Express, April 26, 1912; see also, J. R. Wilson, “Duchesne City,” Vernal (UT) Express, August 23, 1912.

139. “Kamas,” Park (City, UT) Record, May 30, 1914.

140. “Salt Lake and Utah,” Timberman 16, no. 9 (July 1915), 49–50; see also “Personal Notes of Forest Interest,” Ogden Standard, May 24, 1916; F. S. Baker and A. G. Hauge, “Report on Tie Operation Standard Timber Co. Uinta National Forest, 1912–1913,” December 23, 1913, District Forest Ranger Office, Wasatch National Forest, Evanston, Wyoming.

141. “Great Log Drive to Bring 100,000 R.R. Ties Down,” Salt Lake Telegram, May 5, 1920; see also George Chandler Kidder, “State of Utah Death Certificate,” September 18, 1920, “Utah State Archives Indexes,” database, Utah State Archives, accessed May 9, 2019, archives.utah.gov/research/indexes.

142. Wyoming State Tribune, May 23, 1921.

143. T. H. Van Meter to Marvin Combs, March 11, 1965, memorandum, R4 History Collection R4–1680– 2009–0398, FSIR. The USDA’s “Forest and Range Resources” report from 1930 states that even as late as 1927 there were “81 active sawmills in the State,” yet “the annual cut of lumber fell from 25,709,000 feet board measure in 1880 to 7,623,000 feet in 1928.” It also notes that Utah timber harvest had fallen because “the products of northwestern operators now dominate the Utah market through the advantage of large-scale production,” and estimated that “practically 93 percent of the lumber (excluding props, poles, etc.) used in Utah is imported from other states.” See Forest Service Intermountain Region, Forest and Range Resources of Utah, 59–61. Historian Brad Hansen further notes that by the 1890s “most timbered areas of the Bear River Range were already logged out.” Brad Hansen, “Tie Drives in the Bear River Range” (unpublished paper, April 25, 2012), copy in author’s possession.

144. Young, Haire, and Bozek, “The Effect and Extent of Railroad Tie Drives,” 125; see also, John Kifner, “Last Log Drive in U.S. Floating to End in Maine,” New York Times, September 8, 1976; Robert S. Mikkelsen, “Growing Up Railroad: Remembering Echo City,” Utah Historical Quarterly 62, no. 4 (1994): 349–62, 355.

145. W. Dee Halverson, Logging along the Weber (Coalville, UT: Summit County Historical Society, 2011).

146. Peterson and Speth, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 131–33, 140.

147. Baker and Hauge, “Report on Tie Operation”; Peterson and Speth, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 134; see also John A. Vollertsen, “Tie Hackers on the Front Range, 1886–1887: Building the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba and the Montana Central Railroads,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 67, no. 4 (2017): 39–56.

148. Merritt, “Wooden Beds for Wooden Heads,” 105.