FELLED REDWOOD TREE. CALIFORNIA. Circa 1892. It was a mighty job to fall a giant Redwood. They might be three-hundred feet tall or even taller.
‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ applies here. To get sufficient length to work, the loggers welded together two crosscut saws.
In order to prevent the mammoth Redwoods from shattering the wood due to their fall, loggers often would line an enormous trench with tree boughs as a cushion.
Even as recently as 50 years ago it was common in Humboldt County, California, south of the Oregon border, to see logging trucks carrying just three Redwood logs, each forty feet long. There would be (2) two-foot diameter ‘cradle logs’ spaced as far apart as the truck allowed. Then, a single Redwood log, 8-10 feet in diameter, would have been placed to lay on top of the cradle logs. Caleb Megan & Jim
