A few weeks back we had that Shoebox Memory with loggers near Marquette. This past week I happened to stumble across these rugged individuals making wood on the excellent shorpy.com website. That same day I bumped into Ontonagon’s Tom Pestka on YouTube, with this exerpt from his CD on logging operations. If you’re seriously into U.P. logging history, both have some memorabilia to add to you collection. Tom gives a number and email address at the end of the video, and you can buy a hi-res print of the 1899 loggers at the bottom of this Shorpy webpage

Hope your winter is going well. In several places across the U.P. they’ve already had around 13 feet of snow. But somehow we’ve been able to keep the pasties flowing, one of our busiest January’s. A snowplow actually ran into the side of our pasty kitchen building last Monday. Nobody was hurt, but the pasty elves had to mend a crack in the wall before our USDA inspector would give us the OK to get back to work. Only in da U.P.

Have a good week :o)

That's a pretty good excuse if they couldn't get all the orders done as scheduled!

While it is true that these guys were posing for a picture, i still find it interesting that only one of them had gloves on! Our only (known) connection to UP logging is a friend who was a German WWII POW. He was in a logging camp over in AuTrain for a while.

I had uncles who did logging and always wonder if
I'll see any ancestors when I see these older
pictures. These men worked hard for their
families. Thanks for sharing these.

I enjoy seeing the old logging pictures. Those were hard and dangerous days working as a logger.

Deb: I always hope to see one of my relatives in the logging
pictures too. Not yet though. That was tough, tough work. I had
several uncles who were loggers too.

My great-grandparents were cooks at a logging camp. My dad's
parents helped out there too in the early years of their marriage.
My father picked up some pretty salty language hanging around
there as a little boy. He didn't pick up much English before starting
school in L'Anse, but he assured me that he could cuss in several
languages at a very young age. My grandmother was not pleased,
and so they moved to the "big city" so he could start school and get
civilized.

Charlie...perhaps it's time for a drive-thru window.

Nice game by the Pack! But they made it interesting!

Very interesting video and great photos! I enjoy listening to Tom talk, sounds like he could be one of my uncle's. Hard working men for sure!!