Old picture. Lumber boom in the old days.

[Big Frank]

I found an old picture online of these guys in Michigan. This was 10 years before my dad was born and they're doing the same thing he did for his first job. He drove a team of horses hauling logs. I didn't know that the word "team" was a specific number of horses in a specific arrangement. My uncles had a few Belgian Draught horses on the farm. They could easily do work that would put Clydesdales in an early grave. But Clydesdales look nice, so people like them.

Draft horses are commonly associated with draft driving and heavy harness work. Here’s a quick overview of draft horse driving terminology, including different hitches:

    Team: two horses hitched side by side
    Tandem: two horses, one in front of the other
    Unicorn hitch: a team with one horse in front
    Four-horse hitch: two teams of horses
    Six-horse hitch: three teams of horses
    Eight-horse hitch: four teams of horses
    Lead team: the team of horses at the front of a hitch
    Swing team: the middle team of horses in a six-horse hitch
    Wheel team: the team of horses nearest the wagon

I have some pics I took last summer that I haven't picked the good ones from and edited yet, of an area called the Highbanks. It's where a lot of logs went down into the 138 mile long Au Sable River that runs halfway across the Lower Peninsula. There's an exhibit called The River That Changed the World, on the Au Sable River, at the Michigan History Museum, but I haven't been there. I found a pic on Wikipedia someone took from where I was. After the lumbering was done, the river was dammed, and now there are 5 hydropower dams. I practically lived in the woods, less than 10 miles off this map. Nearby, Iargo Springs water flows to the surface from underground. The wooden boardwalk stretches over 1,000 feet as it winds through the natural springs.

Rollways Campground is on the same river. And a National Forest ORV trail leads right to it, and to the Dam Store in Foote Site Village by the Foote Dam. I always have to go to the Dam Store when I ride that trail. My friends have to go to the Dam Store too. Everyone has to go to the Dam Store all the time. A rollway is a natural or prepared slope for rolling logs into a stream, or a pile of logs stored at a landing. I drive past the road to Skidway Lake every time I go to my friend's cabin. A skidway is a usually inclined platform on which logs are piled for loading or sawing, or a road or way formed of skids or along which objects are skidded. The last definition sounds something like a corduroy road, like the one that used to be by our cabin in the U.P. Anyway, there are lots of things around Michigan to remind people about the lumber boom, at least if you know what the words mean. They cut almost every tree worth cutting and worked their way north. They didn't stop until the got to the Straights of Mackinac. If it wasn't for the peninsula ending there, they would have logged off the U.P. too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_Sable_River_(Michigan)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iargo_Springs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corduroy_road