of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, page 81
RAFTING DAYS. Captain W. A. Blair gives an interesting description of rafting on the Mississippi river in the following article which first appeared in the Chicago Timberman:
"The rafting of logs began about 1845 and reached its height in 1890, when the Chippewa river alone sent out over 600,000,000 feet of logs, besides over 400,000,000 feet of sawed lumber for the yards at Burlington, Keokuk, Hannibal, Louisiana, St. Louis and Chester. The first rafts floated down the Mississippi were very small, were carried along by the current and handled by large oars on the bow and stern. The logs were rafted in strings seventeen feet wide and held together by poles across them, to which each log was fastened by wooden plugs and lockdowns. These strings were fastened together into rafts from five to ten strings wide and about two hundred and fifty feet long. Delays by wind, sticking on sandbars or breaking on islands were common and while the price per thousand feet was very high, the proceeds of the entire trip were often required to payoff the crew.
"In 1865 W. J. Young, of Clinton, Iowa, one of the most successful pioneers of the lumber business, encouraged Captain Cyrus Bradley to try a small steamboat hitched to the stern of a raft to push and guide it in the stream. His first efforts were not highly satisfactory but enough so to induce him and others to try pushing rafts with better boats in the same way, which they did with very gratifying results.
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