Last Drive

Last week the ice went out of the Littlefork River in northern Minnesota with a great rush, playing hell with International Lumber Co. Most years it would make little difference to International whether or not the Littlefork rose 26 feet in a few days. It did this spring because for about ten miles the Littlefork was a river of logs. Piled on its ice all winter by 600 lumberjacks were 11,000,000 feet of white and norway pine destined for the company's lumber mills at International Falls, near where the Littlefork enters the Rainy River. If flood waters washed the logs over the piles driven to impound them, they might shoot away from the mill down the Rainy, into Lake of the Woods; if the river went down as far as it rose logs would lie stranded on the banks; and in either case the last big logging drive in Minnesota would be spoiled.

First since 1932, International's drive was to be the last for reasons connected less with conservation than with the temperament of the Chippewa Indians. Minnesota's only remaining stands of virgin timber are on its Indian reservations and Government preserves. Some years ago, International bought its timber from the Nett Lake Reservation for about $90,000. At the time it was the plan of the U. S. Indian Service to get the whole area cut clean in the hope that the Chippewas would take up farming. This plan has now been changed because the Chippewas prefer to live by Government checks rather than by agriculture. From now on the Indian timber lands will be cut on a selective plan, which means comparatively few acres each year, and the logs will be taken to mill by rail and truck instead of floated down roaring rivers in the spring by shouting men with peaveys and hobnailed boots.

To save its two-year accumulation of timber, International last week did all it could. Lumberjacks wrapped hundreds of feet of steel cable back and forth across the piles of the Nett River Bridge over the Littlefork. Against this dam a log jam 40 feet thick and three miles long formed quickly, booming and groaning with the pressure from back stream. Meanwhile in Duluth and International Falls the toughest bars filled up with other lumberjacks waiting for the flood to subside and their own special job to begin. These were rivermen, skilled riders and drivers of logs. About 200 of them had drifted in from points north and north-west where log driving is still an annual affair. They had what the Scandinavians call "snus" (pinches of snuff) in their lower lips, steel on their feet and names like "The Beaver," "Big. Ben" and "Dirty Dan" to awe less colorful citizens.

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