Because there was much timber in the Priest River area, early settlers began making a living by logging  the dense forests.  Priest River's first saw mill opened in 1897 when the demand for lumber increased. Back in the old times there were men who could sometimes saw faster than the old chain saws could cut through a log. The loggers would use steers and horses to pull the logs out of the woods before they had tractors.  They often logged in the winter time because the snow on the ground made it easier to skid and haul logs.  Logging sleighs were used to transport the loads of logs. 

This is a picture of a team of horses hitched to a sled loaded with logs taken about 1912.

Credit: A. Stewart

   In the early days of logging, loggers moved the logs down to the rivers in flumes and chutes.  Flumes were board troughs with a stream of water flowing down through them.  Chutes were board troughs that were greased.  They were built on the mountainsides and traveled down to the rivers. After the logs were cut and brought down to the landing and bucked up, they were hauled using horses to a mill or put in flumes or chutes and slid down to the river. The river pigs, like those shown in the picture below, would break up all the log jams in the river with tools called peevees.

This picture shows some river pigs breaking up a log jam.

Credit: Red Rouse

    The river pigs used boats called bateaux (ba-toe) to haul crew members from log jam to log jam as the logs floated to the mills.  One of the bateaux, the Diamond Match bateau, can still be seen today outside the Keyser House Museum.  The river pigs worked at breaking up two different kinds of log jams:  wings, which were jams that built up along the shore of the river, and centers, which built up in the middle of the river.  If a river pig fell off of the boat and didn't come back up with his peevee, he would get fired.  If a man fell in the water, but didn't lose his hat, it was not counted as a fall.

Here are some river pigs posing in a bateau.

Credit: USDA Bureau of Entomology

    From 1901 through 1949 Priest River held an annual log drive. The drive started at a point 3 miles north of town and millions of board feet of logs floated down the river to the mills. Modern roads and logging trucks put an end to the annual log drive.  According to the February 21, 2001 edition of Priest River Times Weekly, this years ' Timber Day will have a special celebration honoring the hundredth anniversary of the great log drive.

    Railroads were also a very big factor in the early days of logging. The Great Northern Railroad began construction in 1892.  The railroad made it easier to haul the logs to different locations.

This shows a log train at Kalispell Creek in 1929.

Credit: Henry A. Peterson

    Early mills in the Priest River area included the Humbard Mill, the Diamond Match Mill, and the Beardmore Mill.  The Beardmore Mill was located below the present day Priest River Park.  In the early 1900s it was the largest employer in Priest River.  In 1919 it went broke as a result of the Depression.

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT EARLY LOGGING, RAED THESE BOOKS

Lumber Jack

By: William Kurelek

This Was Logging

By: Ralph A. Anderws

Early Loggers and the Sawmill

  By: Peter Adams

Loggers

By: Rick  Steber