R.. Possible Mill Site

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Are those old snags, or just. . . what did they leave standing?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, I can't honestly say.

Bob Zybach: And it looked like maybe a fire had gone through here. Was that possible?

Neil Vanderburg: No, not that I would have any recollection of. Now, the aerial photo that you are talking about. There was nothing on the other side of the road was there'?

Bob Zybach: No. Just a little patch of trees.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. Because that was all farmed in the '30s.

Bob Zybach: But this was logged, but there was quite a bit of material that was still standing.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. And actually, these trees that we're in now, the bigger trees are the size that we were logging. I can't tell on the tape, but you see there's one, probably 20 inches on the stump. And that one there, that's

Bob Zybach: Now that one over there might be 30 or 32 inches.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. And that's an old growth from my recollection, what we've always called old growth.

Bob Zybach: It's got rippled bark.

Neil Vanderburg: It's got rippled bark and broken off limbs and stuff, and that.

Bob Zybach: That might have been an understory tree when they logged here before. It looks . . . they would have logged this 52 or 53 years ago, and that looks like it might be, what, 60 or 70 years old?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, something like that. But that is, from what my memory is, the old growth was more of a grade of tree than it was the size of a tree.

Bob Zybach: Jim Hanish pointed to that age group, and up on Forest Peak they'll get quite a bit larger than that. And he called them old growth, and they're about 70 years old.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. But you see that tree there is possibly 70 years old, but it was probably a pretty small tree when I lived in this area, but that's interesting that we . . . now you see these little saplings here? Those are old growth.

Bob Zybach: Just because the way the bark is forming?

Neil Vanderburg: See the bark on it? Give those 30 years and they'll be old growth. See what I'm talking about, those two right there'? Why don't you take a picture of those?

Bob Zybach: Okay. [Phtographs on file with OSU Research Forests]

R. Possible Mill Site

Bob Zybach: We're now at the old mill site, or what we think is the mill site.

Neil Vanderburg: What we can look for to find the site for sure would be an area of possibly a flat area where there was a lot of bark chips and stuff off the logs that settled to the bottom of the pond, and in all likelihood there should be some evidence of that old mill pond here. My brother and I were up here in 1956 deer hunting and we found parts of the old dam. Of course, that's another 35 years ago, and that wood is probably completely demolished now.

Bob Zybach: So the dam was made out of wood?

Neil Vanderburg: The dam was made out of wood with dirt on the sides like we found up there at Cooper's mill.

Bob Zybach: Were they logs or cants, or . .

Neil Vanderburg: No, they were lumber. Probably 3-inch lumber, 3 by 12's.

Bob Zybach: So they were built into a framework or something?

Neil Vanderburg: They were built into a framework and then they were slid, these boards were slid into the framework and then when the pond got full of bark and stuff they could slide these boards out and drain it and refill it.

Bob Zybach: So the boards were put in vertically?

Neil Vanderburg: Vertically, yes.

Bob Zybach: Were they tongue and groove, or just regular boards?

Neil Vanderburg: I think they were just regular boards. I think there was some leakage through the dam. Now this is a fairly big flat spot in here, and Bill had the sawmill and he also had a planer mill. And he had a resaw for taking his 2-inch or 3-inch or 4-inch lumber and making it into 4-inch, 6-inch, or 12-inch planks. And so it was a fairly big operation, and I think right here is just about the only place it could be, don't you?

Bob Zybach: It looks like we're at the headwaters of the creek.

Neil Vanderburg: lJh huh.

Bob Zybach: We've got a hill coming down off the west there, and we're in a big flat, and we're in an area that's held pond water here just recently. This winter.

Neil Vanderburg: They did drag logs in from the north with horses, so we may be able to find some skid marks from the logs over there where they skidded them up to the mill.

Bob Zybach: Okay, why don't we try to do that.

Neil Vanderburg: So we've got a couple of things here that we might be able to look for.

Bob Zybach: Okay, I just took a couple pictures of you, Neil, with the sprouts in the background and the old mill site, and we're standing here along what looks like an old skid trail.

Neil Vanderburg: They brought some of the logs around the head of the mill, the mill pond. We've got a skid road here and we've got a skid road right there. And I remember those skid roads.

Bob Zybach: Okay, those are coming in from the northwest on a flat that's covered with hardwoods now.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. Alder, or something.

Bob Zybach: When this was a skid road through here, was this all muddy, or covered with bark? Or did they deck logs here?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, of course all the logs that were brought in here were brought in by teams of horses and it got muddy in the winter. But not as bad as you would think, nothing like what cats do. But basically they were pulling the logs in from this area right in to the west and the north of us. And I never went up in the woods where they were getting them from, but I did work in the mill for a week or so when I was about 13. I got paid cash because even then I wasn't supposed to be working.

Bob Zybach: But you were working in this mill right here then?

Neil Vanderburg: I was working on the planer. I was grading off the planer down there.

Bob Zybach: Is that when Coote owned it, or Weinert?

Neil Vanderburg: That was when Coote owned it. My dad worked here when Weinert owned it. But I worked for Bill Coote. Bill Coote felt kind of sorry for us, we were farmers and so forth, and so he gave my dad a job and let me work once in a while when he could get away with it. But this is definitely the old mill site. I'll betcha that if you'd go down on the other side of the creek in there with a metal detector, you'd pick up some nails or something of that sort.

Bob Zybach: Okay, now they logged with horses on this side. How about from the south there? That was all logged out by the time they set up the mills?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, it was just a natural clearing in there pretty much. We actually. . . this whole

Neil Vanderburg: area down here was a plank dock. The planer sat on a plank dock.

Bob Zybach: How big was that dock? About.

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, gosh. Probably about 100 feet square. 100 on each side. Maybe not quite as wide as long. But it went down there just about to the trees.

Bob Zybach: What kind of power did they have here?

Neil Vanderburg: They had a steam tractor. Clifford Cornutt was telling me when they brought that steam tractor over from Berry Creek over here how by the time they got up to the top of the hill over here above Berry Creek it was getting dark, and he says, "Boy that old steam tractor sure did glow!" Because they were throwing 4-foot slab wood into the fire box, and the old smoke and sparks were just coming Out of that thing coming up the hill!

Bob Zybach: So they used a steam tractor from the old mill to yard itself up the hill?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: How would they do that?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, it had wheels on it. It was an old farm tractor, an old steam farm tractor.

Bob Zybach: And that was the only power for the mill here?

Neil Vanderburg: That's what ran the mill, yeah.

Bob Zybach: So did this kind of look like kind of a "Smoky Stover" kind of operation, or did they put it together pretty nice?

Neil Vanderburg: No, I thought it was a pretty good deal. And of course they had a steam whistle on this that you could hear all over the valleys here and so forth. And I think I mentioned before that my dad used to tell me when Bill Coote would blow his 5 o'clock whistle, he'd say, "Well, that's one thing about being a farmer. You don't have to quit when the whistle blows." I think I mentioned that before.

Bob Zybach: This was one of those whistles he was talking about.

Neil Vanderburg: This was one of the whistles.

Bob Zybach: What dimension lumber were they turning out here?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, most all of these mills were tie mills, railroad ties. And you had trees that were, oh, somewhere between 16 and 20 inches on the stump. So you could maybe get 2 by 12's, maybe even as much as 14 under the slabs, then you would get almost the heart, then you would turn your log and start cutting the other way. And of course, the ties I think were 6 by 6, so you ultimately ended up with 2 by 6's or 2 by 8's when you got down to the tie size.

Bob Zybach: Do you know how many thousand board feet they'd turn out in a day?

Neil Vanderburg: I haven't the vaguest idea because I didn't know that much about lumber. But I know they had two lumber trucks that were very modern. What they did, they had rollers on the back of them with a flatbed on them, and Bill Coote built some stands out of tie wood material that were just the right height, so when they would back under and roll that load on, well that tie stand would fall down and he could push against the mill and push that load of lumber clear onto his truck and then tie her down and away he went. And boy that was really modern!

Bob Zybach: So they were vertical stands, were kind of just made to be knocked over?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, just made to be knocked over so that he could back on under it. Sometimes he'd have to jump out of the truck and kick the stands out of the road, and he'd back on in and when he left, well then they'd stand the stands back up and stack their lumber on it.

Bob Zybach: Did he own the trucks?

Neil Vanderburg: No, no.

Bob Zybach: How many people worked here in the mill?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, it would take me a while to figure it. There was the pond monkey, and the sawyer, and the ratchet setter, and the off bearer, and the resaw man, and the cutoff saw man, and about 2 or 3 off bearers off the green chains.

Bob Zybach: So with truck drivers there were about 10 or 15 people here keeping things going?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, then we also had the engineer that kept the steam engine running, and he was a millwright, I suppose you'd call him now. Of course in those days you had babbitt bearings and he went around every two hours or so and oiled all the babbitt bearings and stoked the boiler, and then of course if a bearing went out well he'd pull it at night, so he was there too. And then of course we still had the planer over there -- that probably entailed at least four people involved in the planer.

Bob Zybach: So they sent finished lumber out of here?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Was it air dried?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: So they'd cut cants and air dry them. Would they have a drying area?

Neil Vanderburg: Actually, they didn't air dry them. They just sanded them green! Because we didn't have room in here to air dry them. As you can see, there was just room for the mill pond, the sawmill and the planer mill in here.

Bob Zybach: Then where would the lumber be trucked to?

Neil Vanderburg: I have no idea. The truck drivers. . . he put that set up with the rollers on just before John Weinert took over, and the truck drivers lived at our place. Because they, well they were close to the road here. And when John Weinert took over, I don't know what he used for trucking or anything, but Bill Coote had the truck drivers board at our place. They were single guys and they owned their own trucks.

Bob Zybach: What size of trucks were they driving?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, Chevrolets and Fords.

Bob Zybach: Flatbeds

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, 85 horsepower, whether you needed it all or not! With 30 speeds ahead or so. [Laughs]

Bob Zybach: What was it, a big 6, maybe?

Neil Vanderburg: V-8. Fords had the V-i's in those times, and Chevrolets had the 6.

Bob Zybach: Would they just have a single dual wcle?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, just a single axle, duals. I doubt if they hauled more than about 2,000 feet per load.

Bob Zybach: But you don't know where they hauled those loads?

Neil Vanderburg: I have no idea.

Bob Zybach: How many teams were logging up in here?

Neil Vanderburg: Three.

Bob Zybach: Three teams?

Neil Vanderburg: Donald Dickey told you the Burbanks, and Forest Tandy, and who did he say the other one was? I can't remember.

Bob Zybach: Burbanks, Tandy -- oh, McAlpine. Did McAlpine die by this point?

Neil Vanderburg: I don't know. I didn't know McAlpine.

Bob Zybach: Okay. But we can look at Dickey's transcript. He named. . . now was this a year round operation or seasonal?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, yeah, it went year round. And basically, I believe that they put that road through because of Bill Coote's mill there I think.

Bob Zybach: Tampico Road, there.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. That and the fact that we had a whole bunch of high school kids down there at Berry Creek all at once which we were having to transport almost to Airlie and up to Suver and around that way. So I think that was. . I think about '38 that they went

Neil Vanderburg: ahead and punched this road on through and made it a year round road.

Bob Zybach: So at that time the kids in Berry Creek took the school bus.

Neil Vanderburg: Soon as they built this road to Corvallis High School? We all went to Corvallis High School.

Bob Zybach: Why don't you tell that story now about your family history in Corvallis High School?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, I don't know exactly what you want to know, but I have 1936 annual from Corvallis High School showing that Corvallis High School was way out in the country when I was in high school. The Future Farmers farmed the 60 acres just north of the high school there, and there was no houses. I mean Corvallis High School was sitting out there all by itself. You could see it for miles when you come into town on 99. And anyway, I take it you want me to also tell at our 40th class reunion, I graduated in '41, and when the '41 class had their 40th reunion, well they asked who had the most kids. Well, I had six children and Keith Robison had six, and so they asked us what our kids had done that was noteworthy, and I said well all six of mine graduated from Corvallis High School. And so Keith gave up, so I got the prize, and now I've got a granddaughter going to Corvallis High School.

Bob Zybach: When does she graduate?

Neil Vanderburg: Four more years I believe. She just started this year.

Bob Zybach: But this year you'll have your 50th reunion.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, we'll have our 50th reunion. I got a letter from the people that are putting the reunion together, I got it from Aloha, Oregon, and of course the woman was married and so I didn't recognize the name and didn't know what it was all about. But I got it yesterday, inviting me to the 50th reunion, and we're going to have two-day reunion. We are going to have a dinner in the evening, we'll take pictures and make kind of an annual for those of us who are still alive. And then on Sunday they're gonna have a tour of the Corvallis area. I don't know whether it'll be a walking tour or what, and then those of them that want to play golf, they'll play golf across the [Wilamette] river from Corvallis there, on that golf course. But anyway, when I make my reservations I'm going to tell them that I financed the rebuilding of Madison Square in Corvallis, and if you go in there -- we put in an elevator -- and if you go in there you will see a plaque above the elevator to Mr. Kleinschmidt and Carl Werner. Well Carl Werner was my wife's father, and we dedicated it to him because he had just died at that time. Anyway, I'm going to write, when I make my reservations, and tell them that, because when we were in high school that was Whiteside's Hardware Store. It took that whole corner there.

Bob Zybach: Are there any other kids from Berry Creek or Soap Creek that you can remember that might be going to this reunion?

Neil Vanderburg: Possibly Edith Tandy, maybe Betty White. They were the only two that graduated with me. You saw the pictures of our graduating class.

Bob Zybach: And they're still alive?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, all of them but Leslie Gardner. Leslie Gardner died of cancer ten years or so ago. But I talked to Edith Tandy, and Betty White is her aunt, but Edith Tandy is a year older than Betty is. And I wouldn't be surprised to see Edith Tandy there. She lives down at Yoncalla.

Bob Zybach: We just took a couple pictures next to this old stump here, and could you describe why this about five or six foot [tallJ stump is here?

Neil Vanderburg: This is what we used to call long butt. Donald spoke of it in his book, Donald Dickey, and we had a little trouble understanding what he was saying. But it sounded like he meant that they were 16 feet long. But my guess was always six to eight feet long. We've got one laying here that's about five feet long, and the contour of it shows that there was some, either some pitch or damage on the butt here. Maybe something had hit it, maybe another tree fell against it or something. So they long- butted it to where the good wood was, and that's what Don was talking about in his book.

Bob Zybach: You can see where this injury is that caused the butt to flare, so somebody looking at the butt there might think they've got a 28 or 30 inch tree, but where they cut the log five feet up it's only about /8 or 20 inches.

Neil Vanderburg: How would you like to know how big it is? [Laughs and pulls out measuring tape.]

Bob Zybach: Oh, well let's find out. Let's see how good my eye is here.

Neil Vanderburg: How about 24 inches counting the bark.

Bob Zybach: Well you can't Count that.

Neil Vanderburg: Okay, then we'll go for 22 inches. Twenty-one inches, whatever!

Bob Zybach: The stumps we're looking at are mostly about a foot to 20 inches, and how much product could you get out of one of these trees here?

Neil Vanderburg: Some of these, just slabs and ties. Some of them, of course, we got some lumber out of. But we can see evidence here of some of the old stumps that are still here that you'd just get maybe one tie and maybe a 2 by 4 off of one side of it, and they had to have, in those days they had to have the heart right in the middle of the tie, so these small trees made awful good ties. Because you take a tree like the one we just took pictures of here, the heart could be way off to one side from the injury and so forth and make it awful hard to get the heart in the middle of the tie.

Bob Zybach: So would you just not cut a tie on that, or would you actually set up and still cut a tie?

Neil Vanderburg: They'd still saw up to three inches of the heart on one side. Unless the heart was crooked. Of course, in this case here it was probably crooked in this area, but it might have centered once you got up past the long butt.

Bob Zybach: Would the trees be yarded in tree length to the mill?

Neil Vanderburg: No, they'd be around 16 feet.

Bob Zybach: So that'd make two ties then, each log that would come into the mill would make two ties.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. And actually they cut them an extra six or eight inches long for trim. Because the loggers with the old swede fiddle, they couldn't cut square and the ends of those ties had to be square so they gave them trim on it. And that's what you cut off.

Bob Zybach: So, out here the trees would be. . they were using chainsaws at that time, weren't they?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, no.

Bob Zybach: They were still using hand saws and horses until /941?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. I hadn't heard of a chainsaw until 1946 or '47. And I tell you, my sister wrote to me and told me my brother-in-law, he worked in the woods for Werner Timber

Neil Vanderburg: Company down there on what do you call the name of that creek?

Bob Zybach: Euchre Creek. Over in Lincoln County.

Neil Vanderburg: Eucher Creek. And he was. . when Werner Timber Company bought their first

Neil Vanderburg: chainsaw -- they didn't really buy it, they just gave it to him to try out to see if they wanted one or not. And they were kind of skeptical about it being as good as what they said. And of course in those days the chainsaw was a two-man saw, and the motor unit probably weighed 80 or 90 pounds for the simple reason they didn't use aluminum in those days on a motor. So it was all cast-iron motor. And so you had to they also hadn't learned the technique of being able to go around the tree with it. So the saw had to be as long as the tree was thick. But anyway, going back to my story, my sister wrote me a letter and told me that they had given Orval [Cummings] the first chainsaw to try out and they didn't know how it would work out. And being down in California, I didn't see how they could Cut with a dog chain, or a logging chain, any kind, a bicycle chain, or any kind of a chain I ever saw, and so I couldn't hardly wait to get back to Oregon to see what a chainsaw looked like!

Bob Zybach: Well, do you remember the brand name of the saw he was using?

Neil Vanderburg: He used a Mahl and he used one made up in Canada.

Bob Zybach: Was that a Timber Beast?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, Timber Hog.

Bob Zybach: Timber Hog.

Neil Vanderburg: But anyway, that was at least in '46, '47, in there was the first time I ever heard of a chainsaw.

Bob Zybach: My great uncle JBen Robbins] used one on the Lewis River in 1936 or '37. They blew up two of them in the first two days. But, didn't they have handle bars, and one guy had the handle bars? You couldn't tip the motor even sideways, could you?

Neil Vanderburg: No, you twist it. . . you had a round thing on the drive, and if you wanted to fall, then you just released it and turned it on edge, whichever way.

Bob Zybach: That was 90 degrees.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah . . . to whichever way you wanted to turn, or if you . . . actually, if you wanted to undercut, you could turn it 160 degrees and come from underneath.

Bob Zybach: And then the person operating at the other end, he operated what was called the stinger, wasn't it?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, the stinger was the other end. It just has one handle, and that was called the stinger.

Bob Zybach: But that was the second guy operated the stinger.

Neil Vanderburg: That's the second guy.

Bob Zybach: Did he have a name? Was he called the bucker, and the guy that operated the saw called the faller or anything like that?

Neil Vanderburg: No, the guy on the one end was the stinger operator, and the other end was the power saw operator, is all I ever heard.

Bob Zybach: That's what they called them, huh?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. But you see in those days they had carburetors on, and if you tipped them too much, well you'd poor the gas out of the carburetor.

Bob Zybach: Well they still had to limb with axes, didn't they?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, yeah.

Bob Zybach: So they used axes to limb, and then they used the swede fiddle to buck.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, back when I was working in the woods. I never worked in the woods with a

Neil Vanderburg: power saw. I've used a power saw a lot since then.

Bob Zybach: How would they fall these smaller trees here? Would they use a saw for them?

Neil Vanderburg: They didn't use power saws for them.

Bob Zybach: But they used a cross-cut saw and then an ax to

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. And contrary to what a lot of people would think, when we cut an undercut, we chopped the whole undercut. We didn't even saw on the bottom. Most of them saw it on the bottom. But of course the undercuts in those days were flat on the bottom and sioped on the top, now of course they

Bob Zybach: More like a beaver cut or something.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. Well, actually it was flat on the bottom, V-shape. Like I told you this morning about my brother-in-law when he was falling those spruce down on the Alsea, they laid in the undercut, so it was flat on the bottom.

Bob Zybach: Well, we cut like that even some in the 70's. But then they started putting in what they called Humboldt corner, where it's flat on the top and then you cut up to it.

Neil Vanderburg: Reason for that was, you take on a 6-foot tree, your undercut was at least a foot of whole log lost. If you cut up from underneath, you didn't lose that much.

Bob Zybach: Or you take 150 20-inch trees in an acre, there's all your largest diameter ends right there. So, on the back cut, would the back cut come in level with the top?

Neil Vanderburg: Sloped just a little bit.

Bob Zybach: Sloped a little bit down?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. That was to keep it from going over backwards.

Bob Zybach: Were you aiming kind of to the base of your undercut, down to the flat part on your undercut?

Neil Vanderburg: We usually tried to come in about two inches above the undercut.

Bob Zybach: And then you'd still have your first buck then, you'd have to cut away your stump? So you'd have not only the waste on the stump but your first cut there.

Neil Vanderburg: Well, I'm talking about hand tools. I don't know anything about power saws.

Bob Zybach: But then your bucking was done with hand saws, and not with axes or anything.

Neil Vanderburg: What they now call two-man saws, but we only had one man on 'em.

Bob Zybach: Well, you only had 20-inch trees though, too.

Neil Vanderburg: Well, when I worked down there on the coast we cut a lot of stuff there that ran well, I bucked on tree that had 14,000 feet in it, so

Bob Zybach: With a two man saw by yourself?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: On the ax, was that called a faller's ax?

Neil Vanderburg: No.

Bob Zybach: Called a logging ax?

Neil Vanderburg: No, we just called it a double bit ax. And one side of it was sharp for cutting undercuts and the other side was sharpened more of an angle for knocking limbs off. If you ever took your side that you cut the undercuts with and hit a limb with it you just pulled it over because it tapered out so high on that end that you didn't cut anything but good wood.

Bob Zybach: So when you knocked the limbs out of there you were able to get. . . you weren't actually cutting through the limbs, you were actually knocking them out of place and getting them flesh with the bark that way.

Neil Vanderburg: We weren't chopping the limbs actually, we. . . I mean the ax was sharp enough you could chop them. But most of them that you're knocking off, a lot of them are dead

Neil Vanderburg: limbs anyhow. And they're hard.

Bob Zybach: Would you kick those off?

Neil Vanderburg: Beat them with an ax. We always get the right side.

Bob Zybach: WOuld anybody ever cut into their foot or anything while they were limbing?

Neil Vanderburg: I suppose.

Bob Zybach: Wasn't real common though?

Neil Vanderburg: No, we were pretty careful. There was a funny thing happened while I was working the woods down on the coast. We were eating lunch, and we always sharpened our axes after we finished lunch. And one time my brother-in-law, that's Orval, wanted to borrow another guy's file, and so the guy tossed it with the sharp point first, and it went into my brother-in-law's ankle. And the guy says, "Watch out!" And my brother-in-law says, "Why, you gonna throw another one?" By the time he said "Watch out!" my brother-in-law was pulling the file out! But as far as . . . I heard of a lot more of fingers and toes getting chopped splitting wood than I ever did in the woods.

Bob Zybach: What kind of hats would you wear out here?

Neil Vanderburg: None.

Bob Zybach: No hats? Not even a felt hat to keep the sweat out of your eyes?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, we wore those old red hunters' hats. You remember those old felt? Okay, well by the time spring came the brim had shrunk down to about 3/4 of an inch and draped over your ears and it had enough sweat and oil off your hands and stuff so that it was pretty stiff and so every fall in hunting season we all bought a new hat, and then by the next fall it was pretty well used!

Bob Zybach: Those were the "Red Hat Days"? When hunting season would come around.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, it was red hats in the fall but by the next fall when you bought a new one they were getting pretty black.

Bob Zybach: What. . . as long as we're on the topic, what kind of shirts would you wear, and pants, while you were logging?

Neil Vanderburg: In the wintertime it was what they called tin pants. They were made out of canvas and I don't know if they were waxed a little bit or what, but when they got cold and wet they got so stiff you couldn't bend your knees, you just kinda walked along like this! I'm showing you, I can't tell it on the recording, but.

Bob Zybach: Kind of like goosestepping or something?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. It was. . . they became very stiff. But they didn't leak, and they didn't. you didn't sweat in them near as bad as you do in the plastic coats that they wear today because they did breathe. But they would be. . . the coat would, by the middle the back, it was six inches off your back. And so you had a lot of air circulation from underneath. They would just get stiff and they would just kind of fit you as you were going like this, well pretty soon the coat was way out in back of you.

Bob Zybach: Would they get limber during the day while you were working?

Neil Vanderburg: We took them off, when they were limber. We never had one on when they were limber.

Bob Zybach: What would you wear in the summer?

Neil Vanderburg: Just a regular shirt.

Bob Zybach: Would it be like flannel or wool, or. .

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, usually.

Bob Zybach: Wasn't like now, where everybody wears the same kind of shirt?

Neil Vanderburg: No.

Bob Zybach: How about suspenders or belts?

Neil Vanderburg: We all wore snagged off pants; our pants were all cut off almost halfway to the knees to keep the limbs and stuff from getting caught in the pants. And of course our boots came up higher than where they were cut off, and most everybody wore suspenders. To let air circulate, and also the suspenders were good for hanging things on when we were moving from one tree to the other. It was just the way you did things.

Bob Zybach: Now, you call them "snagged" trousers. And I've heard them.

Neil Vanderburg: "Snagged off", yeah.

Bob Zybach: i've heard them called "stagged trousers", too.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. But we always called them snagged off.

Bob Zybach: What kind of caulk boots would you wear? What brands?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, there were some Currins made up in Washington, up by Centralia. But I wore Wescos. And they were sold by Western Auto Supply. And they were. . . 1 could buy these Wescos for about $13, which was like a week's pay at that time. But my brother-in-law Orval, he always had to have the Currins. They were more expensive, they were more pliable, and they were easier to . . and they were also more

Neil Vanderburg: waterproof. That was pretty important when you're wearing a pair of leather boots all day. Once or twice a week we would always hang our boots over the old wood cook stove that the wife worked on and get them good and warm, and then we'd take some deer tallow and mix it with linseed oil, one thing and another, and grease our boots so that we could keep our feet dry. And we greased them summer and winter because if you didn't grease them in the summer time they wouldn't hold water next winter. So it wasn't a case of just keeping your feet dry, but to keep them soft also.

Bob Zybach: What kind of gloves would you wear?

Neil Vanderburg: I never wore any gloves.

Bob Zybach: Did very many people wear gloves?

Neil Vanderburg: They did after they started using power saws, but I don't think. . . I think it would be dangerous with axes and stuff to use a glove. But I . . . one thing my brother-in-law was always jealous of me, when we'd work in the woods and both of us would be bucking, I was ambidextrous, and he says I got to rest half the time! He had to stand there and saw all day with his right arm, and I'd saw for a while this way and then I'd get over here and saw with my left arm and my right could rest! He was always jealous of me for that.

Bob Zybach: Can you think of anything else in this particular area? I think we've covered.

Neil Vanderburg: I think we've pretty well covered it. And I'm real tickled to find it so obvious because I haven't been out here in over 30 years, and we just walked right into it by walking up the creek here. I knew that's what we could do.

Bob Zybach: But if you didn't know a mill was there, you'd think it was some natural meadow or anything else. You'd have a totally djfferent idea.

Neil Vanderburg: It very likely was a natural meadow when he cleared out and put his mill in there. You know, I don't think we ever did go down there in that bottom.

Bob Zybach: Fifty years later and there's hardly a trace.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, except for some old skid roads, and the creek that he made the mill pond with and stuff.

Bob Zybach: If you didn't know better, though, that could be a little bit of a sluff, and some seasonal drainage ditches there.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, if you didn't know there was a mill, if you didn't know it when you came up here you'd never find it.

Bob Zybach: That's right.

Neil Vanderburg: But we found quite a bit of evidence of it. I wonder if these logs had been cut 50 years ago?

Bob Zybach: I'd say that these shorter stumps and these ones hollowed out have to be. Because this area was all logged off then, and they didn't have any more logs until 10 or 15 years ago. And then we're seeing some newer stumps that look like they were thinned out of this area, probably letting this poison oak and grand fir understory start to sprout here. But I. . . it looks to me like this is logging that you took part in here. These old skid trails and these older stumps have to date from that time.

Neil Vanderburg: Well I found those trees that we called old growths, you know, because people today, an old growth is a big old tree, and actually an old growth has never been to me necessarily an old tree!

Bob Zybach: Well at least we can say for people in the Berry Creek and Soap Creek area, everybody I've talked to, it's the condition of the bark, and it's a rivuleted bark, and it seems to come on when an tree is 60, or 70 or 80 years old. And that's what they're calling old growth, rather than necessarily a larger tree that's younger with smoother bark.

Neil Vanderburg: But also, any old growth they were a slow growing tree. The railroad used to, back in World War II times, require 18 grains to the inch. And that was old growth. I mean, there was no second growth that had grown that slow.

Bob Zybach: Okay. So those smaller trees that we were looking at, took the photographs of, those definitely would have 18 rings to the inch. That would determine them as old growth. By railroad standards.

Neil Vanderburg: I would think so. Except possibly when they are young they may grow faster. But as they, you know, I mean maybe along close to the bark.

Bob Zybach: I think the reason those are so small, though, is that they were suppressed and probably the logging 50 years ago released them. So even when they were young, they were probably like these understory trees we're seeing here, which are 20 or 30 years old and three inches in diameter. That'd be my guess as to why they're so small.

Neil Vanderburg: But you see that's an old growth right behind you there.

Bob Zybach: Yeah, and it could have some larger rings in the middle.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Neil Vanderburg: You can see looking at that tree right there . . . we had what we called a Spud that we peeled the white firs with, and then they took them out as buckskins, and took them down to the paper mill. Then they chopped them up and made paper out of them, and it was good, pure white paper because the white fir itself was fairly light wood inside. Plus the fact that there was no bark or anything on it. And boy after you got through peeling one of those, you didn't want to try and step on it, because it was slick! That old slimy sap in it!

Bob Zybach: Now these were sent to a pulp mill, so the white fir would be separated out and sent to Salem, and then the Doug-fir would be hauled down to the local tie mill and cut into ties.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And then the slabs would be taken off the tie mill and sold for firewood.

Neil Vanderburg: Slabs were sold for firewood.

Bob Zybach: Were there any other products coming out of here? How about madrone or oak?

Neil Vanderburg: Uh huh. No, basically there wasn't much. . . actually most of your white fir wasn't intermingled with your red fir or old growth. Because your white fir seemed to grow down pretty close to creek bottoms. See you probably won't see any back this way, but we're getting down towards the creek bottom. See there's one you can see down through there, just to the right of my pickup, quite a bit bigger than this one. And you can look at the bark, now that I've pointed it out to you, and see that that's different than the Doug-firs here.

Bob Zybach: I got to tell you though, I already knew the dWerence! I Laughs]

Neil Vanderburg: Well, I know, but I didn't think you called them white fir! I thought you had another name for them.

Bob Zybach: Piss fir.

Neil Vanderburg: Is that right!'? Well, I don't think they made lumber out of white fir in those days. But most of it they could clearcut and not be bothered with white fir, because I suppose you know they grew on the creek bottoms. Pretty much.

Bob Zybach: Well, we did a lot offalling of white fir and Doug-fir just on the other side of the hill. This was six or eight years ago, but yeah, and they come up in the shade here, and they grow, we can see they're growing faster f anything than the Doug-fir, they probably put in more volume in these wetter areas.

Neil Vanderburg: Of course, you have less grains to the inch, too.

Bob Zybach: Was Hanish. . . now he logged off a lot of white fir and sold it into pulp?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: But did he sell any logs that came over to the mill here at all?

Neil Vanderburg: No.

Bob Zybach: Okay. So he was almost strictly a pulpwood logger.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. Old Hanish was kind of a hermit. He. .. I mean if he could have made more money I don't think he'd have sold logs to the mill. He was just. . . of course, there is one thing. When they loaded the logs in those days, when they did put them on trucks, they had rollers, which was two or three logs running lengthways and built up on a stack of logs, and then they had to roll them onto the truck with a Peavy. So they didn't build high loads like they do now.

Bob Zybach: What would the lengths be, would they be 4-foot, or 8-foot lengths?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh no. No, 16.

Bob Zybach: So they'd run them the same. . . and then they'd haul them on flatbeds with stakes?

Neil Vanderburg: No, the log trucks had trailers. They didn't have any brakes on their trailers, they were single axle trailers and single axle

Bob Zybach: But Hanish would haul out of here by log truck?

Neil Vanderburg: He didn't haul. There was a contractor that came in. He sold them on the ground. And then they came in and logged them out. And, I don't know, there used to be a paper mill in Salem and I think that's where they went. I don't know whether that mill is still there or not. I doubt it, because paper mills stink.

Bob Zybach: We're now about 150 feet west of the road.

Neil Vanderburg: Right up to that knob of the hill I was talking about.

Bob Zybach: Nearly on top of the Smith Peak crossing here. We're standing on what looks like a really old road bed, crossing over Smith Peak from Soap Creek to Berry Creek. Can you describe this here, Neil, or what you remember about this?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, just that probably what we came in on was probably the old tram road, and they probably put some rock base in for the tram road. And then this is the road that he put in later after the county road was put in. I'm having a little trouble here seeing where this road could have gone from here, but I guess it went on down around those stumps and then right there. Yeah, that's about the way it would have come in.

Bob Zybach: It looks to me like it curves down, and curves uphill around the creek, and maybe connects into the mill up there, and that would have been the crossing. That there was an old loop in the road here maybe.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. This road would have to end up down below the mill. That's where they came out, down below the mill.

Bob Zybach: So this road, even after the county road went in, this road here was being used to get to and from the mill?

Neil Vanderburg: We put this in after the county road.

Bob Zybach: So this road is actually younger than the county road?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. Yeah, the county road of course was a summer road a number of years before this road was used. I have an idea that probably the old steam engine came in on this road.

Bob Zybach: This road here?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: So this is essentially just the logging, milling, millworkers road. And would they use this road to get to and from work, or was it.

Neil Vanderburg: Oh yeah, after they put this other road through. But I think what we came in on, if you remember how I talked about that other road there, coming off of Sheppard's, that that was mostly plank road. But this one here was an all-year road without any planking on it.

Bob Zybach: It was rocked?

Neil Vanderburg: Apparently. It seemed to me like he rocked it. But of course we've got so much moss and leaves and stuff on it we couldn't see if it was rocked or not here.

Bob Zybach: And the cutbank has washed down quite a ways in most spots. How wide were the planks that were put on those plank roads?

Neil Vanderburg: Four by 12's. Two wide. You always, you had to be careful your front wheels that you didn't get in the crack, because they'd do the splits, and then you'd fall down through and then you had to jack yourself back up.

Bob Zybach: So they were running out in the direction of the tires?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Oh, so there were just two tracks, basically?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And so each track was 12 and then the cross ties were underneath?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: How often would they run the cross ties?

Neil Vanderburg: Probably every four feet.

Bob Zybach: And then the actual railings themselves were maybe 8 foot long?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, probably 16.

Bob Zybach: Sixteen?

Neil Vanderburg: The ones going lengthways.

Bob Zybach: And those would be four foot thick and twelve inches wide, and so.

Neil Vanderburg: No, four inches thick.