In a Jan. 26, 2024, article,  “The perilous work of producing shingles,” we reviewed the many dangerous steps that loggers did each day to harvest the massive trees in the dense pacific northwest forest and get them to various lumber and shingle mills for processing.

This article will explore what life was like in the logging camps where the loggers ate, slept and spent their “off-time” together.

Many of the loggers who worked the Pacific Northwest forests in the late 1800s had previously logged forests in New England and the upper Midwest states before moving westward.  As they moved from one camp to another, they experienced a wide range of living conditions.

What was a logging camp?

A logging camp, also known as a lumber camp, was a temporary work site used in the logging industry. Before the mid-20th century, loggers lived and worked in these camps to cut down trees in a specific area. Camps were often located in remote, mountainous and uninhabited areas.  It was preferable that they were located near river tributaries, so that logs could be floated down to lumber or shingle mills, as well as providing necessary water to the camp.

Dependent upon how many trees needed to be harvested, the length of the camp’s existence varied from only a few months to several years. Camps typically housed between 20 to 40 loggers plus the camp’s staff, which included cooks, their helpers, stable boys, blacksmiths, filers and repairmen.

Most camps included a cookhouse, a bunkhouse, livery stable, blacksmith/repair shop and several outhouses. In larger camps or in camps with long durations, additional facilities were sometimes added including company stores, as well as bathing and showering facilities if an ample water supply was available.

Logging camp personnel

Cooks and helpers: The role of keeping order and things running smoothly in the camp often fell to the head cook. A good cook was held in high esteem by the loggers. If a logger caused problems with a good cook, they faced potentially serious consequences from the other loggers and often were banished from the camp.

The quality of the food prepared by the cook(s) was a key factor in the camp’s success. The saying “good cook – good camp” was generally true. If the food was not up to the standards that the loggers needed and wanted, loggers would often leave and move to a camp where the food was better.

Conversely, it was also not uncommon for a “poor” cook, to be “run out of camp” and replaced by a better cook if one was available

The cook’s assistants helped prepare and serve the meals, clean tables, wash dishes, dispose of leftover food, chop and stoke the wood burning stoves, and control the camp’s vermin as best they could (i.e. flies, rodents and other wildlife attracted by the smell of food).

Author’s note:  In some camps, pigs were brought in to eat the food waste, and later to be possibly butchered for meat.

The cook and his assistants prepared three meals a day. A hearty breakfast that was served at daybreak, a lunch that was often eaten in the woods and a large meal after the men returned to camp after working 10 hours or more in the woods.

In some camps, the cooks prepared the lunch meal along with breakfast. The loggers took the midday meal with them in containers, ate at their worksite and returned the receptacles to the cookhouse upon their return.

In other camps, the lunch meal was prepared after breakfast was over. The lunch meal was then delivered to the loggers by the cook’s assistants, who were called “flunkies” or “cookees” in some areas.

Blacksmiths, farriers and stable personnel

In logging operations, oxen and horses were critical in dragging or hauling logs out of the forest. The health and well-being of the animals was essential to the success of the operation. If an individual logger owned a team of horses or oxen, he normally took care of his own animals, making sure they were well fed, watered and bedded down for the night.

If the camp had horses or oxen that were owned by the landowner or logging company, stable boys were employed to take care of the animals.

To help ensure the health and well-being of the animals, the camp relied upon a blacksmith or a farrier to replace shoes, mend or replace straps, harnesses and reins.

Being a blacksmith was a difficult job. In the remote woods, they had to forge horseshoes and nails, as well as other implements along with attending to the needs of multiple teams of horses and oxen.

Filer and repair personnel

Regularly the loggers’ saws and axes had to be sharpened to maximum efficiency. A camp with up to 40 loggers often had several men responsible for keeping the tools sharpened and in good repair. Their tasks also included checking and repairing the massive chains that were wrapped around logs for transport. Safety was a constant issue, as a snapped chain or a saw in disrepair often led to serious injury or death.

As one logger commented, “it was too bad we didn’t have a capable surgeon in camp.  We could have gained an additional logger every month if all the dismembered body parts could have been sewn back together.”

Chore boy: Camps often had an individual who was responsible for chopping wood for the bunkhouse stove, keeping the bunkhouse clean, bringing water to the camp from a stream or river if there was water nearby. By various accounts, these individuals were often boys or an old logger who had lost three toes by a misguided axe.

Logging camp structures

Bunkhouse: The bunkhouse was where all the loggers slept at night. Typically,they were wooden structures with beds that were doubledecked along two sides of the structure, as well as on the back wall. (i.e. the wall on the opposite side of where the door was situated).

The bunk itself was made of lumber planking with straw or tree boughs laid on top. Loggers were responsible for supplying their own bedrolls. Blankets or clothing were laid over the straw or boughs to make it more comfortable.

Bunkhouses were equipped with a single wood burning stove to provide heat during the night. An opening for the chimney was cut into the roof. In some cases, extra openings were also cut into the roof to let the smoke from the wood-burning stove escape.

Loggers who were sleeping near the stove became too hot at night and would get up and open one of the openings in the ceiling.  The loggers sleeping further from the stove would be cold and would get up and close the ceiling panel. This went on throughout the night.

Lice, bed bugs and flies were a constant problem. A classic story from a logger related that he was awakened in the middle of the night by two bedbugs talking. The first says, “Shall we eat him here or drag him over to the corner?”  The second one said, “Eat him here, if we drag him to the corner the big ones will take him from us.”

Other accounts stated that the only time it was safe to go to the outhouse was at mealtime, when the flies would be over at the cookhouse.

When the lice became too “itchy,” the loggers would boil their clothes on Sunday to get rid of the lice. In some cases, loggers recounted that many of the loggers never took a bath. They felt washing your hands and face was enough, and it was unhealthy to bathe, especially in the fall and winter, as they feared contracting pneumonia.

The clothing was then hung out to dry on tree branches or taken back to the bunkhouse to dry with the wood stove burning  This in turn, turned the bunkhouse into a steam bath.

The cookhouse: This structure was where the cook(s) and assistants prepared meals and lived.  If any of the cooks were women, they lived in a different portion of the cookhouse and were totally “off-limits” to any of the men in the camp. In most cases, the women were married or older.

The cookhouse also included a large area with tables where the loggers ate their meals. In most camps, the loggers were not allowed to talk during meals, except to ask for food to be passed to them. Cooks wanted the men to eat their fill quickly. The less time spent eating, the more time they had to clean the tables, wash the dishes and prepare the next meal.

It’s interesting to note that the fare did not vary that much from camp to camp. It was what the cook was able to do with it that made the difference between a good cook and what the loggers referred to as a “belly-robber” who put out “poor doin’s” in the dining hall.

In the late 1800s the cooks didn’t have a wide variety of products to work with. Potatoes and biscuits were served at every meal. Eggs, a few fresh fruits and vegetables, pork and beans along with other canned meat, and occasionally fresh game meat was available at various times. Some of the better cooks built their reputations by baking pies, making molasses or gingerbread cookies and even making “oatmeal” taste different from day to day. Well-made coffee and strong hot tea also became differentiators.

Author’s note:  Some accounts indicate that the typical logger consumed around 8,000 calories every day (three to four times today’s norm) to maintain their weight and health.

Stables

A stable was typically erected to provide the working animals with shelter fromthe weather and a place where they could lie down if they wanted. Each owner of a team groomed and cared for their animals.  This was almost a sacred rite as there was a strong sense of pride among the loggers regarding their animals. They took pride in the appearance of their animals and bragged/lied about how well trained and smart they were.

Privies and outhouses

A logging camp typically had two or three outhouses built over holes in the ground. Depending upon the size of the hole and the number of people using the facilities, the outhouses were often moved every week or two, with holes being covered.

According to numerous accounts, the loggers had to use various items including leaves, pinecones, and other items from nature to clean themselves as paper was not available.

Camp life – outside of work

Loggers worked dangerous, exhausting jobs for 10 hours, six days a week. They typically were awakened early and called to breakfast by a horn or the ringing of a triangle outside of the cookhouse. After returning to camp in the late afternoon, they ate supper and retired to their bunkhouse.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a time for relaxation necessarily. Clothes drenched with sweat, or moisture from the weather needed to be changed out of and dried. Many loggers had only a few clothes: one or two pairs of pants, a couple of shirts, a couple changes of underwear and maybe a coat.

The one item that the loggers had multiple pairs of was socks. Loggers wore ankle-covering shoes with metal or wooden spikes in their soles to help them keep their footing on wet, slippery trees or logs. Inside the shoes loggers wore thick woolen socks that were soaked by sweat or the weather by the end of the day. Before being worn again, they had to be dried out in the bunkhouse without being washed. The loggers also had to mend holes they had worn in the socks to protect their feet. One can only imagine the odor that came from 40 pairs of wet socks plus other wet clothing as it hung in the bunkhouse being dried by the heat from the wood-burning stove.

Loggers also had to spend time cleaning and potentially repairing their own tools and gear if they had been damaged during the workday.

If the loggers had time to relax, they often played cards, primarily cribbage during the week and serious poker games after work on Saturday night if they remained in camp

In most camps, lights were turned off at 9 p.m. during weekdays so that the loggers could get their needed rest. If loggers were staying in camp over the weekend, another favorite pastime was playing the riddle or harmonica while singing songs native to the areas where they had come from. Many of the songs sung in the Pacific Northwest camps had originated in Europe, eastern Canada or the upper Midwest region of the United States.

As several accounts attest: “On Saturday we’d have an accordion player, or a fiddler or a harmonica and you’d wear a flour sack apron or tie a white handkerchief around your arm, and you would be one of the ladies in the square dance”.

Generally, the drinking of alcohol was forbidden in camp, but an occasional visitor would smuggle a bottle in to a friend or family member. On Sundays the camp received visits from traveling ministers and salesmen trying to sell their wares to the isolated loggers. It was also the time that photographers visited the camps. It was due to these Sunday visits that most of the surviving early photographs of the early logging camps exist.

Weekend trips to town

If a town was close by, loggers often would head to town with their hard-earned money in hand to have a little fun, blow off steam, drink and take advantage of what the town had to offer.

In preparation for the trip, loggers would bathe in a river, stream or lake if one was close by. They would also have other loggers help them shave or cut their hair, although the results sometimes were not what they had originally bargained for. Some loggers even had a second set of clothes that they only wore to town.

Once in town, the loggers frequented the saloons, gambled in various card rooms and possibly hooked up with ladies of the evening. In Edmonds in 1890, the two blocks from Front Street up to Second Street and running two blocks north from Main Street to Edmonds Street were filled with boarding houses, saloons, card rooms and other entertainment venues for the loggers.

As one logger recounted: “On Sunday morning, it was a good thing that the horses knew how to get back to camp, because we were in no shape to drive them there.”

Once back in camp, fully recovered or not from their time in the town, early Monday morning brought the reality of a hard week of dangerous labor ahead of them.

This article was researched and written by Byron Wilkes. Thanks go to all the institutions credited beneath the photos and for discussions with the Journal of Forest History regarding camp life in the late 1800s.