Pacific Northwest Logging Industry Large Photographs Archive of Labor and Deforestation Systems, 1920s-40s

Pacific Northwest Logging deforestation

Photograph

[Logging] Pacific Northwest logging industry photo archive documenting systems of timber extraction in, Oregon, Washington and Northern California during the early twentieth century, illustrating how camps moved logs through cutover ground, snowbound slopes, skid roads, and mechanized loading sites. The prints show the sequence of logging work: clearing, hauling, lifting, sorting, and burning slash as part of industrial forest production across the western lumber belt.

Photo archive of 4 large silver gelatin photographs, each approximately 8 x 9.5 inches, Northern California, Oregon, and Washington, circa 1920s-1940s. One photograph shows a jammer raising a massive log while a worker stands in the foreground with peavey in hand and freshly cut rounds stacked beside the machine; the verso reads “Jammer bringing in W.P. log / Park River Lbr. Co.” Another records winter logging on a steep, snow-covered hillside, where a horse team and two workers move timber down a built log road; the verso notes “I-20 / winter logging at camp 23 PFI / 1019-CL.” A third shows a bulldozer amid a broad cutover tract strewn with felled trunks and stumps, emphasizing road building and ground clearing after cutting. The fourth captures active burning in the forest with smoke rising around a dozer and a handwritten verso caption reading “Burning out skid road with dozer.” Captions include “PHOTO FROM / WESTERN PINE ASSOCIATION / Yeon Building, Portland 4, Oregon / PLEASE RETURN” stamps, a Rognon Studio, Westwood, California stamp, and a Haas Brown Seattle studio mark, preserving the circulation history of the prints within western forestry and commercial photography networks.

These photographs come from the period when Pacific Northwest logging shifted across overlapping systems of machinery, camp roads, and organized slash disposal, concrete evidence of how western timber companies converted forest land into transportable lumber under changing technological conditions. Creasing to corners and minor loss at corner margin on one image. Overall clear and sharp, very good condition. The photographs preserve the working sequence of regional resource extraction, and the transformation of forest landscapes in the Pacific Northwest.

Item #23331

Price: $450.00