Wood On Glass
A large load of logs stacked on approximately twenty rail cars is ready for hauling, leaving behind stumps and desolate hillsides. Toward the end of his PA sojourn, Clarke often documented the devastated, barren countryside; sometimes called the “Pennsylvania Desert” by Henry W.... Read more
Wood On Glass
Card playing was a favorite way for wood hicks to spend leisure time. These nattily dressed men have improvised teeter-totter chairs and a barrel table. The 4th of July was a favorite holiday, marking the end of bark peeling. Competitions between camps were another form of rec... Read more
Wood On Glass
This was known as the Shacks. Built on platform cars to be transportable to follow the flow of work. Consists of cooking, dining, lobby, and sleeping rooms, as well as cars for horses. This solution for temporary housing probably was as efficient and commodious as the stationar... Read more
Wood On Glass
Two men work together with a crosscut saw, removing a trunk section of a peeled hemlock tree that broke when it fell across another tree already down. A break like this was undesirable, for sawmills could not create boards from the tree unless the damage was removed. Loggers prid... Read more
Wood On Glass
Bark peelers sometimes used bark shacks as a temporary dwelling. They constructed a wood frame and covered it completely with large hemlock bark slabs. By overlapping the slabs, the men had a relatively rainproof place to sleep. Bark peelers were no doubt used to harsh living ... Read more
Wood On Glass
Clarke photographed this group of unidentified children in a series of images made during the winter. Posing them on a “rough and tumble” log pile was dangerous. Logs could shift suddenly and break bones or instantly crush a person. Children no doubt were cautioned not to climb t... Read more
Wood On Glass
Slides were used to move logs to the rail heads wherever practicable in North Central Pa. Water was used to ice the slides in cold weather. Spikes were often placed at critical junctures to slow the speeding logs. Where slides could not be built due to terrain problems, teams of ... Read more
Wood On Glass
Clarke made a group of images of the Norwich Millpond & Sawmill for the Goodyear Lumber Company. This view from that series. The Norwich operation sawed its first log in 1912 and cut its last lumber on August 20, 1921. Operations consisted of long hours six days per week, only pa... Read more
Wood On Glass
The growth of Cross Fork was phenomenal after a large sawmill opened there on May 3, 1894. Four months after the mill converted its first tree into boards, the local newspaper, the Tribune, boasted that Cross Fork had: “2 drug stores, 3 meat markets, 5 grocery stores, 3 millinery... Read more
Wood On Glass
Frank H. Goodyear of the Goodyear Lumber Company is credited with adapting the basic idea of the portable steam shovel, patented by Henry M. Barnhart in 1884, to the logging industry around 1887. The Barnhart loaders operated from rails fastened to the tops of the log cars; allow... Read more
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