of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, pages 82-83
THE FIRST RAFT PILOT. "Captain S. B. Hanks, now living in Albany, Illinois (1905), at the age of eighty-nine years, gets the credit for having been the first recognized raft pilot. He saw the business grow from a single trip to a great industry in which ninety steamers were engaged regularly all season long, whose crews numbered all told 1,800 men, with a monthly payroll of over $80,000.
"The average raft steamer is 130 feet long, twenty-six feet wide, four feet hold and has two-inch pressure boiler with engine thirteen inches in diameter and six feet stroke. Some of them have very nice cabins with accommodation for the crew of twenty and a few extra. The logs are driven down the small tributaries into the Black, Chippewa, St. Croix and upper Mississippi rivers, and then flooded and driven down loose into the Mississippi river.
"Black river logs are rafted at North La Crosse at the mouth of the stream. Chippewa logs are driven down into the Mississippi at Reed's Landing, then twelve miles down into West Newton slough, where they are held, sorted, scaled and rafted by the Minnesota Boom Company, which company can turn out, when conditions are favorable, 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 feet per day. St. Croix logs are rafted at Stillwater, where the St. Croix river enters St. Croix Lake, Upper Mississippi logs are driven loose from St. Anthony's Falls and rafted between Fort Snelling and St. Paul. From these points the steamer tows them to the sawmills at Winona, La Crosse, Lansing, Guttenberg, Dubuque, Bellevue, Lyons, Fulton, Clinton, Moline, Rock Island, Davenport, Muscatine, Burlington, Fort Madison, Keokuk, Quincy, Hannibal and St. Louis, while rafted lumber is sometimes taken to Chester, eighty miles below St. Louis.
"The average speed of a towboat and raft down stream is three and a half miles an hour. Of late years several operators have adopted the plan of making their rafts very long and using a small steamboat fastened crosswise of the bow. By going ahead or backing the bow boat the raft can be pointed around or kept in the channel much move quickly than the boat at the stern could do it alone. Another point gained by this plan is that while the ordinary raft is too wide for the bridge draws and can only be put through one-half at a time, lengthened out double length and half width, double tripping the bridge is avoided and much time saved.
"The business has seen its best days. Forest fires and the chopper's ax have destroyed nearly all the good timber accessible. The average size of the logs diminishes each year. Mill after mill will close when its supply of white pine is exhausted. One by one the towboats that have chased each other down the grand old river will be laid to rest and rot, while their crew, who have waited in vain for the pleasant message to 'get her ready at once' will wander off, sadly trying to catch a land lubber's step and earn a hard living on shore, thinking often of the old familiar whistle he will hear no more."
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