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ABOUT LOGGING
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Fred E. Law at the age of 17 quit high school just before graduation to work in the North Woods of Maine. He had refused to take English in high school because he stuttered and would not stand up in front of the class to speak. He was good in mathematics and spent the summers as an aide to a land surveyor. The surveyor convinced him to apply for work at the Hollingsworth and Whitney (H&W) logging operations in Greenville, Maine. His mathematics paid off as he was immediately hired as a trainee to scale the logs being cut for the H&W pulp and paper mills in Winslow, Maine. He is shown here in February 1914 with his scaling tools. In his left hand is a set of calipers used to measure the diameter of the log. The spoked wheel at the other end measured the length. One spoke was weighted so it would always start in the same place. In Law's right hand is the scale. It gave the results in board feet, depending upon the diameter, length and the use to be made of the log. |
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If a redwood log were any bigger than the one shown here, it would have to be split before the log could be moved over a public highway. Around 1965, the portion of the Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California growing redwood trees was transferred to the National Park Service and the Forest Service no longer harvests redwood trees. |
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