Archaeologists breathe life into old-time lumber camp
Last week, U.S. Forest Service archaeologists and volunteers excavated the camp with the same meticulous techniques applied to studying more ancient civilizations. Digging in 10-centimeter-deep layers, they sifted soil through screens and mapped locations.
The work was prompted by the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires the Forest Service to check out significant archaeological finds in areas that may be disturbed by development — a short access road is to be built through the camp.
Any artifacts more than 50 years old are considered potentially of archaeological interest, and Rick McClure and Cheryl Mack — a husband-and-wife team of archaeologists at the Gifford Pinchot National Forest — have devoted much of their time to delving into the recent past.
They excavated around a 1909 Forest Service station and checked out fire lookouts from the 1940s. They even checked a dump left behind at a 1937 Civilian Conservation Corps camp, salvaging old issues of the Saturday Evening Post and gallon wine jugs that were supposed to be forbidden for the federal workers.
"Some of the old guys who'd been part of the CCC thought we were crazy for digging around a garbage dump," said McClure. "Others thought it was pretty neat."
McClure said these projects can offer an important — sometimes intimate — window into the events of the past century. And though these people are only a few generations removed from the present, their lives still hold surprises.
No detailed written accounts of camp life are known to exist for the loggers who lived at Wind River Lumber Co. Camp 3 from 1906 to 1909.
"When you look at who wrote back at that time — it tended to be more literate people," McClure said. "This is an underrepresented group in terms of what we know about their history."
The loggers at the camp labored amid a bleak, blackened landscape left behind by one of the century's earliest — and deadliest — forest fires. It was called the Yacolt Burn and flared up in the fall of 1902 as dry winds funneled through the Columbia Gorge. It killed 38 people, dumped a half-inch of ash on Portland and darkened Seattle skies so much that residents turned on lanterns at midday.
The fire charred 240,000 acres of old-growth forest, an area exceeding the timber acreage downed by the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980.
Gifford Pinchot, eager to show — as the first chief of the Forest Service — that his young agency could generate revenue from federal lands, approved a major salvage effort.
Wind River got the contract. To bring out the logs, the company built a camp in a streamside area in a kind of ghost forest of standing dead trees. There were about eight buildings, including a mess hall, bunkhouse, cookhouse and what appeared to be a blacksmith shop. The loggers used handsaws to bring down the trees, steam-donkey engines to yard them into a creek and water power to flush them downstream to the Columbia River and a mill.
After the camp closed, the buildings were razed; today, a thick, lush forest of Douglas fir, salal and Oregon grape covers the site.
McClure and Mack decided to dig at the camp after learning that a dam-removal project would require a short access road to be built through the bunkhouse site.
The road project couldn't go forward without the survey.
Old photos helped them determine the sites of various buildings. Then last week, McClure and Mack helped supervise a team of 10 volunteers recruited from as far away as Kansas and Maine. They spent eight hours each day working with trowels, screens and a metal detector, the excavation sites shielded by blue-tarped awnings to protect against the frequent rains. By week's end, they had mapped locations that had yielded hundreds of fragments of glass and metal, as well as some intriguing artifacts spread out on a display table.
The use of a big glass bottle was easy to guess. Students from a Carson middle school who visited the dig last week all agreed it once held whiskey.
But what about that broken piece of forged metal?
"Maybe it was used to shoe horses," said Joely Burns, a 13-year-old from Wind River Middle School.
"You're getting close," said Mack.
Burns took another look and guessed it was part of a metal mold to help shape shoes.
"That's right," Mack said. "This was actually a cobbler's tool, and something that tells you that they had to do all those things right here at the camp. If you were a logger working out in the woods, it was really, really important to have good boots."
Not every find was easy to interpret.
Gordon Pfister, a retired school official from Renton, worked with a hand trowel to excavate three large flat rocks that had been pulled around what looked to be a fire pit. A big plate of metal — perhaps a kind of grill — was slung across the rocks.
It was too close to the main camp to qualify as the base for some sort of moonshine operation.
Perhaps it was just a campfire spot to heat a can of beans. But Pfister could find hardly any signs of wood or charcoal.
He clearly enjoyed the puzzle.
"Doesn't get you very far," Pfister said with a laugh. "What do you want to make out of all this?"
Then he went back to his spade work.
Hal Bernton can be reached at 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com.