Lumberjacks who felled the giant trees of British Columbia

Logging in British Columbia

Felling giants in the wild west

Alex Q. Arbuckle

1900-1930

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

With the completion of the Panama Canal and the exhaustion of the forests in eastern Canada, British Columbia became the center of the Canadian logging industry around the start of the twentieth century. Despite the rugged and difficult terrain, the abundance of towering cedar and Douglas Fir trees made the area an attractive source for ships’ masts and other lumber products. Whereas in the colder eastern forests felled trees could be skidded down snowy roads, in the west skid roads had to be built out of wood. Trees were transported from the mountains down to the water by oxen, trucks, skids, flumes and railroads spanning canyons on freshly built trestle bridges.By 1930, half of Canada’s annual timber harvest came from British Columbia.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable