GAWILKIN-L Archives

From: TINA PEDDIE <>
Subject: [GAWILKIN-L] SAWDUST & FOREST FIRES
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 12:15:13

*HI ALL:
FORGIVE ME if I prev. sent this, but I think it's really interesting,
about early american history ....(got it from someone one of my geneal.lists)
*Tina*
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
SAWDUST & FOREST FIRES:
I was asked about the use of sawdust as road covering in the late 1800's
and did some research. I thought I would share these interesting
findings. Enjoy - Rita Oconto County WIGenWeb Project Coordinator
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wiconto/

Question:
Many years ago I became interested in the various fires that occured in
the Old Northwest during 1871 and remember reading that many logging
camps and larger towns actually paved their streets with sawdust from
the mills so that people could walk them with out getting muddy during
and after rains. Certainly a very bad idea but a excellent explanation
as to why these town "went up" like gunpowder kegs.

Can you confirm or deny that this practice did occur?

Thank you, any reply would be greatly appreciated.

- K. P.
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah


Answer:
That is absolutely correct. The practice goes back to colonial days, but
it wasn't until manufacturing wood during the "Industrial Revolution"
that there was a large enough amount of sawdust to become a problem.
Unlike now when sawdust is used in pressed wood products and some paper
manufacturing, sawdust was just a waste byproduct of milling lumber. A
BIG byproduct. At first they simply dumped it into the rivers and
streams the powered the mills. It would then travel to the mouth of the
rivers and totally clog the bays of the upper Great Lakes. This made
shipping impossible and that meant the lumber could not be shipped to
other places. There are old letter and diaries with descriptions of
sawdust being so thick along the beaches and bays the you could walk out
on the floating matts (also not a real safe practice).

They burned the bark and scaps, that would not make shims and such small
usables, in huge tall coneshaped metal stuctures with open tops and at
night the workers would sit out on the front porches of their cottages
with the family and watch the glowing red burners against the inky black
sky until bedtime. But the sawdust remained a huge problem. It was
highly combustable and not suited for burners as it would also set the
surrounding area on fire with sparks traveling on the wind. Someone came
up with the idea of laying down sawdust on the muddy town roads. Then
you could not only walk on the knee-deep mud, but the sawdust was also
"worked into" the mud by traffic to make a kind of improved surface for
wagon and carriage wheels. And it was free for the hauling. Since the
most concentrated traffic was in the towns, villages and settlements,
this was seen as a big improvement. Just the other day, right here, I
noticed that sawdust from logging off land for development was used on
the mud to make a road inland for the heavy trucks. It was very
successful and took the weight of many vehicles without getting muddy.

This sawdust was also used in logging camps so the mud from the bare
ground didn't impede transportation. It was truly dangerous by today's
standards, and even more dangerous, but absolutely neccessary, by
yesterday's standards. There were also no building codes back then and
all the wood structures were put up fast and close together, often wall
to wall. With lamp oil, wood stoves, fireplaces, candles, and various
fuels being used and stored all over, women and men wearing lots of
cotton clothing, and lots of smoking materials, open fires, sparks from
steam engines (trains, threshers, boats, etc), campfires of hunters,
brush burning, smokehouses for curing meats, bondfires for newly cleared
land, open fires for making soap, scalding fowl and rendering lard,
lightening, back burning, etc. you can only imagine how dangerous life
was with all that sawdust around. Even circuses used sawdust all around
and inside the tents as temporary flooring, and the tents were lit with
open, burning torches attached to the wood mainpoles. That would give me
bigger thrills and chills than any caged Tiger.

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