LARGER THAN LIFE: The Bunyans of Mason County

Stella Wenstob | freelance historical contributor

Paul Bunyan serves as the distillation of the legendary lumberjack – quick on his feet dancing on logs rafts, unyielding with his axe and monumentally strong with his ox, Babe, yoked to pull the mighty logs out of the forest. However, the realities of this early method of logging hardly needs a heroic characterization such as Paul Bunyan, since the individuals who made their living in this rough and ready work truly were remarkable.

The Pacific Northwest “logger” (apparently lumberjack is more of an Eastern term) with their caulk boots and peaveys are also just as storied as their Eastern cousins.

Out here the trees were bigger, the terrain muddier, and the weather wetter.

The early economy of Shelton, and surrounding Mason County, was built by the forestry industry. The land for the first sawmill in the County was staked by Colonel Michael T. Simmons and his backers in 1853. Their interest attracted other settlers to the area, such as David Shelton and his family.

The operation was powered by the waters of Mill Creek (fed by Isabella Lake). It was conveniently located near the mouth of Hammersley Inlet to allow for easy access to shipping. Although, the mill was able to produce 12,000 board feet a day, the mill did not survive its first winter.

The diked mill pond used to control the waterwheel was flooded by the heavy rains of the season and swept the mill off its pilings. Simmons in true pioneer spirit, rebuilt with new investors.

Forest Festival Bunyan float, Shelton Wa

Logging of this time was conducted manually, there were no chainsaws or logging trucks. Fallers (logger responsible for felling the tree) used two-handled cross-cut saws and axes. From a lofty perch known as “springboards” fallers would begin their cut. Springboards were inserted to create a platform some six feet off the ground to avoid the lower part of the trunk that fans out and makes it difficult to drag the felled tree across the forest floor. A wedge-shaped cut was axed into the tree to encourage it to fall in a particular direction and the job was finished with the cross-cut saw.

Very early hand logging tended to fall trees near rivers or shorelines for easy transport of the logs to the mill by water, but later they transported more distant felled timber with yoked oxen teams Teams of oxen dragged the logs over greased timbers laid into the earth which provided less surface area for dragging, known as a “corduroy” or “skid” road.

An early nearby mill was the North Bay Mill in Allyn. Built in 1854 by Vermont brothers, Joe and Warren Sherwood, for Silas Stiles. The brothers bought the mill in 1856 partly using credit they were still owed by Stiles for the construction. Cargo schooners from Puget Sound purchased their lumber, pilings and mining timbers. In 1859, they were commissioned by Balch & Webber of Steilacoom to produce 500,000 board feet and all the logs in their mill pond for $1000. Joe Sherwood was reputed to have been so strong he would pull his logs by hand to give his oxen teams a break. Sadly, Sherwood was also reported to be the first logging fatality in the county. He was impaled on October 16th 1873 by an iron rod he was trying to use to clear a logjam.

His half-Skokomish nephews, Joe and Kimball Sherwood and great-nephew Peter Sherwood, carried on their uncle’s logging legacy and were remembered by Holbrook in his 1945 Green Commonwealth as being some of the most capable loggers in Mason County: “These Skokomish men were wonderful with an ax, and quick, willing and tireless. They took obvious pride in their woods work.” Logging was in the blood on both sides, as their mother, Nancy George, was the niece of the famous Native American logger turned prophet– John Slocum of the Squaxin Band.

John Slocum was an established logger, or “boss logger,” and ran his own logging camp on Hammersley Inlet that purportedly housed sixteen families. In 1882, he was seemingly fatally injured or taken ill (the accounts differ here as to whether his neck was broken by a logging accident or he was sickened by his gambling “bad” ways). He was declared dead, but while he was lying in state awaiting the delivery of his coffin, he amazed his mourners and awoke with visions of Heaven and a message of God. Thus was the beginning of the Indian Shaker Church, a religion that calls upon Christian gospel and Native American elements and is especially popular among Coast Salish peoples with some 3000 followers today in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Logging was tough and going broke was a constant occurrence – if not part of the adventure. One such hand logger who recouped his loses in an imaginative way, was Mark Durham. According to Holbrook in his 1945 Green Commonwealth, after Mark Durham had lost everything and owed everyone in Shelton, Durham saw an advertisement for a bullteam outfit for sale out of Skagit River – some 150 miles away. He wrote to the seller and said he would purchase the team if it was delivered by barge to Shelton. The bulls and seller arrived, but Durham had no money to pay. Instead, he took the man to the stand of trees he intended to log with the team he did not have, and pitched: “… when I get this cut… I’ll certainly pay you for the bulls and stuff.” The man apparently answered, “Mister, any son of a bitch with your nerve is bound to make good.” And Durham did repay him and settled his debts too.

Simpson Log. Co. Kinsey

No. 5, University of Washington Collection

It was this sort of make or break attitude that characterized the logger spirit and perhaps it was a way to cope with the dangerous living they were making. Sol Simpson, although the builder of a masterful logging dynasty, also had this same risk-taking streak.

Sol Simpson

University of Washington Collection

Simpson originally learned logging growing up on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada. He went West at the age of 22 to strike it rich in the goldfields of Nevada. He is rumoured to have lost two fortunes in Nevada, but while there he gained an uncountable fortune when he met and married Mary James Marcon Garrard – who was lovingly known as Tollie. After Simpson went broke on another scheme, the young family continued West.

They settled in Seattle in 1877 and Simpson ran a team of horses grading streets. In 1886, the blind Captain William Renton of the Port Blakely Mill Company hired Simpson to lay tracks for a rail line to Kamilche – known as the Blakely Railroad line. By 1890, Simpson took over these operations under S.G. Simpson & Company and began selling logs to Port Blakely Mill. Tollie Simpson and her daughters were in the logging camps with Sol – often serving as nurse to his workers when accidents occurred. His daughter Irene, married Simpson’s foreman, Mark Reed in 1901.

Mark Reed went on to lead the company through its most lucrative years, moving the headquarters to Shelton and was influential in legislation.

Transporting logs by steam locomotives and new technologies such as the Donkey Engine – a steam driven winch that could pull logs into position – greatly revolutionized the industry. Additionally, Simpson and his business partner A.H. Anderson –known as the Tall Fir of Mason County who was also an important figure in logging and legislature– changed the way logging companies looked at land and were early proponents to sustainable tree practices. Previously, once an area was logged, the land was abandoned, taxes were left in arrear, and the loggers moved on. Simpson and Anderson began buying up land–looking to forestry’s future. Today, Simpson’s descendants, the Reed Family own 1.37 million acres of land across California, Oregon, and Washington – making them the fifth-largest private landowners in the U.S.

Although established as a logger baron by the late 1890s with the Simpson Logging Company as the largest logging employer of the time, the Alaska Klondike gold rush still beckoned Simpson’s entrepreneurial spirit. Partnering with his brother-inlaw C.D. Lane, Simpson purchased and operated three steamboats and a lightning service from his White Star dock as well as several mining claims. Rather than striking it rich, Simpson and Lane made most of their money in shipping. In 1900, they shipped $4,000,000 worth of gold from Nome to Seattle, while the Klondike moved $6,916,000. However, by 1902 the business started to slow and an unsuccessful trip on a Seattle- bound passenger ship compounded Simpson’s financial difficulties.

The ship’s rudder failed– forcing passengers and crew to drift off the Southern Alaska coast. When the ship was finally towed to Seattle, it was greeted by a series of lawsuits. Thus, was another fortune lost in a risky gamble by Simpson.

He lost the ship, a section of the Seattle tidelands and many other assets in the settlement. Fortunately, his one-sixth share in Simpson Logging Company was spared. According to Fredson in Log Towns (1993: 112), Tollie Simpson had a curious memento of the Alaska affair:

Mrs. Simpson… kept a corkscrew she called the “$50,000 corkscrew” because it was all that remained from the Nome adventure.

Forestry is full of these larger than life heroes – be they pioneers like Simmons; stronger than an ox, like Sherwood; or transcendental prophets, like Joe Slocum. Great risk takers, smooth-talkers and epic-entrepreneurs are part of the landscape. Do these real people diminish the legends of Paul Bunyan and inspire their own folktale? Or do they lend credence to Paul Bunyan’s narrative and give strength to the possibility of a man who can drag his axe and create the Grand Canyon?

Beauchamp Paul Bunyan

Whatever it is, it is clear that people have the capacity to be heroes and great stories of adventure, triumph and loss exist outside of the written page.