5-15AP
Horse Logging in the Northwest Art Print
In the days of horse logging the hours were long and the pay low by today's standards. Twenty dollars per month, which generally included board at the logging camp, was the going rate for skid greasers (shown on the right in this painting). Many of these skid greasers were only boys in their early teens, who out of necessity to help support the family, worked at dangerous and responsible jobs.
One horse logger at Molalla, Oregon was quoted as saying, "Once we logged up on the mountain, where we had a mile of skid road. Some of it was level, some uphill, some downhill. We had two lead logs that morning that stood up almost 4-ft. and were 20-ft. long. We just kept tying on to them until we had 52 logs tied on. My partner said, ‘I'll get behind them and give them a little start, and you can take them to the mill.' So I did that," he continued, "and the boys around the mill said that was the damndest load of logs they'd ever seen logged with a team of horses."*
*(Statement made by Mr. Enoch Skirvin as quoted in The Log, Vol. 3, No. 7, November 1979.)
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