Pancakes and Pastimes
The four new photo galleries added to our website today provide a unique look into various aspects of the lives of loggers outside of the forest work environment. These new online galleries, containing nearly 150 historic photos, feature subjects such as Logging Camp Food, Logging Communities, Family Life, and Logger Rodeos.
The Logging Camp Food gallery provides images of logging camp dining halls, kitchens, cooks, food service staff, and meals served. And not to peddle logger stereotypes, but yes, pancakes are prominently involved:
Big Paul Searls eating a logger’s breakfast.
If this gallery leaves you hungry for more information, I would also suggest taking a look at “Old Boy, Did You Get Enough of Pie?: A Social History of Food in Logging Camps” by Joseph R. Conlin from the October 1979 issue of Journal Of Forest History, which provides a great historical look at the types of food found in 19th and 20th century logging camps.
Moving away from pancakes and pie, the Logging Community and Family Life galleries include images of the homes, schools, and towns connected with the logging industry. The Logger Rodeos gallery features historic photos of logging contests and competitions. Anyone who’s caught a late-night ESPN2 broadcast of the Great Outdoor Games will be familiar with the contests found in these images, such as log bucking, tree felling, and the always popular birling, or log rolling competition:
For more logger photos, also check out this previous blog post. To browse the full subject listing of all previously posted photo galleries, visit this page.
