060116seventhgradepress

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Seventh Grade Press

Volume 1, Number 3

‘Sawing wood is in my blood’

By Teja Bradbury

My family owns the only sawmill in Priest Lake, Idaho. We call our Sawmill Priest Lake Lumber Company. My family’s mill has been running for 30 years and is still running!

Have you ever wondered how the giant trucks get those huge log pieces that look so perfect?

Well, that’s what my family did.

Loggers took huge shipments of freshly cut timber to places called saw mills. At the sawmill the first thing that needs to happen is the pieces of branches and the bark has to come off. When the wood is “clean” it is sent through the saw mill. The logs are cut into large boards and stacked up to cut later, or they’re put on big trucks to ship to other places, like hardware stores.

Saw mills also shred timber to make bedding for animals, and

mulch for landscaping.

Some of the wood is split into small or large pieces for fencing and building.

There are a lot of carpenters around the area because a lot of people want homes built around Priest Lake. The carpenters order special shipments of wood to pick up for their job site. Some of the wood from our mill might be cut with chainsaws, or cut with the bark on because people are really liking the country look. Many mills were built all around Priest River and Pend Oreille County. Almost everyone relied on the mills because they cut and shaped wood for homes, barns, and pens for animals. In this picture of my family mill, there is a sign that has been there for generations, along with our Forty acres of timber.

My great uncles, Greg and Steve Bradbury, are the people that run

the mill on a daily basis. You may know my family from our sawmill business or because you have seen my family elsewhere like, working at the Newport school bus garage, or even the Idaho State Patrol police station. Maybe you have even seen my family at the beach because the Bradbury family is featured in the Priest Lake Museum, having worked all over the place and setting sports records at the Newport High School as well as fishing and hunting records in the county.

When I’m older I would love to work in my family mill as my high school summer job.

When I graduate from Newport High School I plan to open my own business and call it Priest Lake Coffee Company, and like the rest of the Bradbury family, one day my business will be know in our community.

June 1, 2016 |

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he Seventh Grade Press is a series of stories written by seventh graders in Ms. Irene Ewing’s class at Sadie Halstead Middle School in Newport. Each student chose a topic of local historical importance, conducted research and interviews and went through a lengthy editing process.

More than 80 students participated and each one will get a ‘by line’ in The Miner Newspapers. This is the third week of the project. Check back for the next several weeks for more on local history. See more on page 8A.

Our Culture Our History

Lots of important machinery in logging

By Wyatt Hamblen

Back in the 1900s logging was a very popular job to have if you were into hard, hands-on labor. Usually, when people think of logging they probably think of a big semi truck hauling logs. In the real logging industry there are many more machines and a lot of important logging equipment that gets the job done.

One of these machines is called a Delimber.

What this machine does is pulls the tree through a circle type saw that cuts all limbs off. This is one of the most important machines working out there. Without it people would need to delimb by hand. The logs are very tough and would slow productions down so bad that they would have to make something.

The average cost of a John Deere delimber is around $76,000 to $100,000. With this machine you can only delimb trees.

One of the other important machines is the semi.

The semi hauls loads from the actual logging sight to the mill.

Most logging semis are

Priest Lake Lumber Co. FAMILY OWNED SINCE 1983

A delimber.

very tough, the average weight of a load is a few thousand pounds depending on the terrain and truck.

All logging trucks are manual transmission because of the way they’re designed for power. With all of this a semi truck is an important tool for competing in the logging process.

Another type of important machinery is a Harvester. This is a

machine that you can get with six legs, or wheels.

One reason you can buy it with spider type legs is so if it’s an environment that is very sensitive the legs only put tracks in little groups. The only downside is that the legs limit the maximum weight load.

The one with wheels can carry a much bigger load but leaves a much bigger and more destructive trail. The main job of

this machine is to pretty much pick the logs up and put them into piles for the loader to pick up.

Logging has been one of the go-to jobs for many, many years.

Many people back in the day would just grow up learning on the machinery, but now in modern times, if you’d like to get into machinery you have to get a CDL and training before you can even start to look for a job.

Horse stumbles into what is now Gardner Caves

By Arik Teem

In 1899, homesteader Ed Gardner’s horse stumbled into the sinkhole that now marks the entrance to his namesake cave, but he never owned the land on which he found the caves. The caves were actually federal land at the time, before it was sold to William “Billy” Crawford. And don’t worry, the horse wasn’t hurt.

Legend has it that Gardner used the cave as his base for a bootlegging business, which wasn’t completely true. The fact of it is, a few empty moonshine bottles were found in the cave and it may have been used as a base at one point in time, but it was never proven because old timers said Gardner was always moving the location to keep his business secret.

After a streak of bad luck at poker, Gardner was forced to sign his deed over to Billy Crawford, the deed to a few splotches of land around Gardner Caves. After buying the rest of the area around the caves from the government, Crawford signed the property over to Washington State Parks.

I have been to Gardner Caves multiple times on the tour and I noticed that it was pretty cool. People say it stays around 42 degrees inside of the cave, so that is cool for a midyear temperature. You had better remember at least a hoodie. It is also wet. There are

dozens of pools of water on the ground below the metal stairway on which the tour is taken.

The Gardner Caves are located about 11 miles past Metaline Falls, Wash., in Crawford State Park, just on the border of Canada and the U.S. The caves descend 90 feet below the surface, with a slope length of about 1,055 ft. Gardner Cave is the third largest limestone cavern in Washington. The tour takes in the first 500 feet, just under half the length of the full cavern.

The 1986 Big Smoke Magazines was a great help with getting some underground information while I found most of the other general information on the Washington Trails Association website and www. tripadvisor.com.

Caves don’t just happen. Once this area was covered by a huge ocean. The unique limestone formations were formed by water, limestone and the remnants of the creatures dwelling in the ocean. To merely touch the formations would take over 200 years to start reforming. The oil and dirt from your hands damages speleothems, which will stop the growth of the formation, because oil creates a barrier that does not allow dissolved minerals to continue to deposit.

I would have to advise anyone who hasn’t gone on the tour to go to Gardner Caves, and experience the scientific and historical values.

Priest Lake, Idaho

(208) 443-2212

Mike Reynolds

LOGGING SELECTIVE & MECHANICAL LOGGING

Serving Pend Oreille Valley for over 20 years

PRIEST RIVER ID • (208) 448-2548

We Support Our Future Newport Professionals

NEWPORT HOSPITAL & HEALTH SERVICES 714 W. Pine St., Newport, WA • (509) 447-2441 www.NewportHospitalAndHealth.org

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seventh grade press

| june 1, 2016

Pend Oreille County is mushroom country Hunting for the fungi – not the fun guy

By Austin Robins

My family hunts mushrooms every year.

We cook them up for a big dinner. I like mushrooms.

Usually we go around on four wheelers and we look for areas that are sunny but have trees over it. We look for the patches where the deer go that the sunlight can shine through to the forest floor.

Sometimes if you are hunting them and

it’s really hot then the mushrooms grow fast.

When they are growing fast they get a little dry at the top and they get old if you don’t pick them at the right time.

We try to go picking in the early part of the morning.

There are morels; they are pretty good when you cook them. If you get a lot you can sell them.

My mom also likes to fix

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You wouldn’t believe the music back in the early Pend Oreille County days. Their music was crazy; and grownups think our music is bad.

A lot of the songs had crazy words. Let’s take the song “Buffalo Gals,” for example. “I danced with a girl with a hole in her stockin and her toes kep a rockin, and her knees kept a knockin.” Seriously?

And then there was, “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone Else but Me.” I heard that song a lot growing up. My grandma

shaggy mane. There are other kinds too, some are poisonous and some are safe.

There are white mushrooms that look the same and some are poison, like the death cap. The Amanita virosa is poison and it looks like the common meadow mushrooms.

You should have field guide with you so you can tell the mushrooms that are safe.

My parents have studied the mushrooms and know what to pick.

You can learn about the mushrooms online and see what they look like.

You have to know exactly what they are to know if they are poisonous.

Mr. Drew Parker is a mushroom hunter who discovered a new type of mushroom in Metaline Falls. In The Miner Newspapers Horizon Magazine, Spring 2008, Mr. Parker said Pend Oreille County residents live in a place uniquely

PONDERAY

Crazy music in old Pend Oreille County

By Katelyn Good

Morel Mushrooms

Proud of our history Proud of our community Making decisions with tomorrow in mind

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suited to mushroom hunting. He said, “We have many of the basic conditions that cause fungi to flourish such as abundant precipitation and a variety of elevation and slope orientations that create microhabitats.”

In the same article, Mr. Drew Parker said to use paper bags to pick your mushrooms, or something non-plastic, because plastic traps moisture which can spoil the mushrooms.

My mom brings those reusable fabric bags from the grocery store. They work perfect for picking mushrooms.

We also bring a gun in case we come across an angry bear or a moose who is going to charge.

It has happened to other people, but never to my family.

When we go it’s fun for the whole family. We have a great time and a good dinner afterward.

Diamond Match a big employer in Pend Oreille County

By Ethan Werley

The Diamond Match Company was originally founded by Ohio Columbus Barber as the Barber Match Company. Diamond Match joined the Kreuger company in 1932 and became the largest manufacturer of matches in the United States in the late 19th century. The Diamond Match Company operated many logging operations in Pend Oreille County in order to provide the wood for all the match sticks.

Much of the match stock, meaning the wood for the sticks, for Diamond Match Company came from Pend Oreille County. For many years Diamond Match was a big employer of loggers in order to get enough wood for their matches.

Diamond Match logged a lot of timber from this county, especially around Lost Creek.

A large logging camp, named Diamond City was established on the east side of the river across from Lost Creek. It was established there to be close to the railroad.

Every day loggers went out to cut the wood and bring it to camp. Mill workers, like my dad, cut it into pieces, and sent it across the river on a tram that looked a lot like a zip line.

Then it was loaded on the train there and shipped to the Midwest to be made into matches.

In the factories the wood was cut with machines into the shape and size for matches. Blades mounted in the machine cut one or two thousand times a minute to form the match sticks.

The match sticks go through more machinery, and are dipped in hot wax to slow down the burn speed of the chemicals they put on the tips. In the olden days the matches smelled terrible. Now they don’t have much of a smell except for a little sulphur burning. The match tip is made of silica, gelatin, potassium chloride, sulphur, phosphorous, glue and some fillers.

In the 21st century, Diamond Match remains America’s leading producer of matches, producing about 12 billion a year.

I heard that song a lot growing up. My grandma has really old country music and we would listen to it when feeding my newborn lamb. has really old country music and we would listen to it when feeding my newborn lamb. The lamb loves it.

There is a really good beat to the old music I noticed, unlike a lot of today’s music. Don’t sit under the apple tree is very uplifting and happy.

In the Roaring Twenties, called “roaring” because there was partying, bootlegging, and dancing, the music was enjoyable, very fast pace so you would “swing.”

Even sad songs had really good beat.

Of the old music, “Mister Rabbit” is my favorite because it always cracks me up.

“Mister Rabbit, mister rabbit your ears so big. You know they were put on wrong.” I love that part of the song, I love Pete Seeger’s songs and Burl Ives, “Jimmy Crack Corn and I don’t Care.”

Burl Ives said he was born June 14, 1909, in Jasper County, Ill. We know he died in Ill., April 14, 1995.

In Anacortes, Wash., Ives launched his own radio show The Wayfaring Stranger. He was a Boy Scout; he was awarded the silver buffalo, its highest rank.

He was inducted in 1966. He was famous for his voice and “Frosty the Snowman.” It always warms my heart when I hear it.

And then there is my song. The old song about Katie.

Beautiful KKKKatie, you’re the only girl I adore. When the mmmmoooon shshshines, over the ccccow shed, I’ll be wwwwaitin at the kkkkkitchen dddddooore.

My grandpa sang this to me all the time. The last time we talked, he sang me it and that’s the last memory I have of him and it’s a great one. He passed away in 2008, but the day before, he sang this song and it made me smile. The next day I got the news he had passed away.

Logging company builds small town

By Zachary Cross

Diamond City was an old logging community that is no longer around because, even in 1920, they had to restore the site back to Mother Nature, according to Mrs. McClenny, the Museum archivist who spoke to our class. The Forest Service use permit required destruction of the buildings to restore the area back to its original condition.

This small town was built by a logging company called Diamond Match, a pioneer of efficiency.

Diamond City was around for only eight years, and in 1920 an astonishing 275 employees were working there. The area is now a meadow leaving hardly a trace of the little logging community known as Diamond City.

Diamond City was built across the river from Lost Creek on the West Branch of LeClerc Creek. After Diamond City was built, Diamond Match had to find a way to transport the milled wood across the river to the train for transport to a match factory.

The result, America’s second longest aerial tram, was like a giant zip line. The tram was suspended over Dry Canyon, which was 3,200 feet long, and was suspended 280 feet off the canyon floor. The tram’s carrying capacity was 10m board feet per hour. The traveling wire was activated by a small motor at the mill.

The small community of Diamond City consisted of about 20 houses, a number of bunkhouses, a company store, a town hall, a one-room school, and more. Life at Diamond City was eventful for its residents. The town hall held the weekend dances and social gatherings, and Diamond City had its own baseball team.

In 1927, Diamond Match stopped its operations at Diamond City, and within the next year Diamond City was no more. The mill was moved, and the rest of the buildings were destroyed and all the workers were gone, as required by the Forest Service use permit issued in 1920.