Tall Tales Tall Timber

In 1977, News reporter Don Carrigan hosted this special look at the history of lumbering in Maine.  From the days of the King’s broad arrow marked for the Royal Navy’s masts on the stately white pines to the four foot spruce logs jamming the Kennebec River for the last time.  You will hear about the ingenuity  that brought us the Peavey and the Lombard steam log hauler.  You will hear tell of choppers, swampers, barkers, teamsters and camp cooks.  He will illustrate the past with artifacts and scale models from the Patten Lumberman’s Museum as well as archival stills and moving images.

“It was exciting.  I think for the people who participated in it.  Exciting in a way that life isn’t today because the lumber woods and the men who worked in the lumber woods dominated life in every sense.  From not only the people who worked in the woods but the people who drove the logs, the people who worked in the mills, the people who shipped the product, who sent it out, people who lent them money, who worked in the foundries to make the saws, make the sawmills.  Every aspect of Maine life was dominated by the woods.  Very few Maine people did not think of the woods as single focus of their life.”

-David C. Smith, University of Maine

Video from the Maine Broadcasting System:

WCSH-TV Portland

WLBZ-TV Bangor

Written and Produced by Larry Geraghty

DVD

30 minutes