River drives: 'Water' way to get logs to the mills

(It was Sept. 30, 2000, that Erik Daarstad and I met with Bob Selle to interview him for the “Sandpoint Centennial” movie. I want to share parts of the interview with you because Bob, in his own unique style, gives us a picture of Sandpoint and Bonner County as it was in his time. Robert William “Bob” Selle was born on Jan. 4, 1916, and he was the fifth child of August and Mabel (Boone) Selle. He attended Sandpoint High School, graduating in 1934. Bob joined the Civil Conservation Corps and was stationed at a camp on Big Creek near Pritchard and later at the camp at Cataldo.  Bob went to work for the L.D. McFarland Pole Company in 1939. In 1947, he became foreman of the McFarland pole treating plant at Sandpoint. He remained in that position for almost thirty years. Bob died at his Sunnyside home on Sept. 1 2004, at the age of 88.)

Question: Bob, was your family in the logging business?

Selle: Yes, my granddad came here with his sons and they settled in the Selle area over at Bronx. The Purcell Trench, at that time, was full of old growth timber; I mean big timber — three and four foot on the stump — cedar and white pine. My dad homesteaded a 160 acres in this same area. He sold his land, went to Colville, and bought a dairy farm and that’s where I was born. I was born in 1916 in Colville and we came back to Sandpoint when I was 7 years old, in 1923.

I first got involved in doing some work in the timber industry when I went with my dad when I was about 13. We  hauled some logs left by the Humbird Lumber Company — decked over in the Edgemere area. We went over with a single horse and a Model A truck that could haul about a thousand feet at a time. We loaded ‘em with a line and rolled ‘em up on the truck. I drove the truck and that was my first experience in actually doing any logging.

Question: Where would these logs go?

Selle: Well, there was mills every place, you see. Humbird Lumber Company was the big mill in Sandpoint and it was the biggest mill around. It had two head rigs. Then Humbird had a mill at Kootenai and Kootenai Bay, and A. C. White had a mill at Dover. Then there was a big mill at Laclede, and one down at Cusick. There were mills all down the river and they used to log in the water, you know, tow ‘em in the booms. It was solid booms from Sandpoint to Kootenai Point, about a mile out. Humbird had a pier out in the lake and they built railroads up some of the big areas — Rapid Lightning and Grouse Creek — they had railroads up there. They would take the easy stuff to the railroad and bring it in. They backed the trainloads of logs out and dumped ‘em in the lake — there were a lot of logs in the water.

The tugs, they’d drive Pack River, bring the logs down and tow ‘em into Sandpoint or whoever’s logs they were. They had to sort ‘em some place because they all were mixed in the drive, you see. Every company was putting logs in the river and then when the high water came, and the logs started floating, they had to bring ‘em on down so they were marked. They had a chopped watermark on the side of the log and then they had a stamp on the end. If the guys working on the booms couldn’t see the stamp, they could take a pike pole and float ‘em up to the gap, and then they’d identify the logs and put ‘em in a boom that would go to a particular mill.

Question: Bob, what would a river pig do?

Selle: Well, you see they’d sleigh haul the logs during the wintertime and they’d deck ‘em. Then when the spring run off came and the water came up enough to float the logs, they’d break those decks into the water and then they’d ride ‘em down because some of ‘em would get hung up. They’d have to take a peavey and roll ‘em off of the bars before they hung up and make sure every one got down to the lake. They usually had a camp on the bigger rivers, they always had camps — float camps, that came along behind for the men. They had a cookhouse and the whole thing. They called the cookhouse a “wantagain.”

Question: Why was that?

Selle: Well, that was just the name they called it because the young people would go out and the cook would give ‘em cake and stuff, you know — the wantagain.

I never did work on a drive but I watched some big drives go through Sandpoint. They were always towing logs and they used to whistle for the bridges — they had to open the bridges to let ‘em through because their superstructure was too high to go under the bridge. They used to whistle for that. There were people that lived right there on the highway bridge — the old wooden wagon bridge we called it. A family lived there that tended to that draw — they had to wind that one up by hand to let the boats go under. The railroad bridge swung open but it had motors. There was a railroad house at the south end of the bridge where a family lived that took care of that.

You’d hear ‘em whistling for a long time to make sure they had it open for ‘em when they got down to the bridge. So, they had a lot of logs on the water — the tug boats.

Question: How many logs would you say was in an average drive?

Selle: On a drive? Oh, it was so big there had to be millions of board feet. It was quite a job.

(To be continued)