Thank Goodness for Water and Gravity - Oregon Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

There are seven history signs (installed in mid-2009) along the river describing the history of the Old Mill District. This sign is the first sign north of the bridge on the east side of the river.
Marker Name: Thank Goodness for Water and Gravity
Marker Text: Railroad and the River moved the Logs to the Mill
Huge trees were felled in the woods and the logs were transported by railroad to town. They were then dropped into the Deschutes River to await their turn in the mill. The river was a perfect storage place for the logs. The natural flow of the water made it an automatic conveyer to the mills. Additionally, the cool water prohibited the growth of the degrading blue stain fungus and kept the logs moist, preventing them from splitting in this dry climate.
Look at all those logs! As they drifted downstream, a floating boom separated the logs destined for the Brooks-Scanlon Mill from those going to the Shevlin-Hixon Mill on the west side of the river. The massive logs waited in the river until the mills were ready to process them into lumber. In the winter, work was grueling as the pond men worked to keep the river from freezing by keeping the logs moving.
Logs were hoisted from the river by the bull chaIn and hauled inside the mill to the log deck. They were then moved on to the band saw on one of the three head rigs to begin the first steps of lumber processing. In the 1970s, due to environmental and river clean up concerns, Brooks-Scanlon began storing logs on the side of the river. Those log storage areas along the river banks were referred to as the cold deck.
The men who worked the logs in the river were known as pond men or sometimes pond monkeys or slough hogs. They would use long hooked poles called pike poles to prevent log jams and navigate the logs to the mouth of the mill. The pond, as the lumbermen called the Deschutes River, was divided between the two mills by log booms, floating logs chained end to end, which were anchored to rock filled cribs. The log booms kept the logs belonging to each company separated.

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