Logging with horse sense

Manly Stanley and High Falutin aren’t exactly light on their feet.

But their horseshoe-clad hooves were less damaging Thursday to a sensitive historic garden site that is undergoing restoration on Spokane’s lower South Hill this year.

The two 10-year-old workhorses out of Post Falls provided the muscle to skid several logs away from garden ruins that date back to 1889, the year Washington became a state.

“It’s such a sensitive area, we are trying to get all we can down (the hill) while disturbing very little,” said Bruce Spencer, who handled the reins for the horse logging team.

Spencer said he normally logs for landowners who want to remove trees but minimize damage to forest soils and underbrush, which is why he was called to Pioneer Park in Spokane on Thursday. He is one of about 10 horse loggers in the region.

The team joined a new phase of work that began Monday in the Moore-Turner Heritage Garden. It is the latest and most extensive phase in the multiyear restoration of the long-neglected landscape being brought back to life by the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department through grants and donations, including a recent anonymous gift of more than $1 million.

About two dozen trees are being removed to open up the ruins, including the 70-foot-long concrete pond, rock walls, arbors and out buildings that had almost been lost over nearly 70 years of neglect. The land-clearing work is being done under a $23,000 contract with Arbor Care Tree Service of Spokane.

“The priority is historic renovation with the idea of trying to retain as many healthy trees as possible,” said Jeff Perry, the city’s arborist.

Construction of the garden dates to 1889 when F. Rockwood Moore moved into his Kirtland Cutter-designed mansion along West Seventh Avenue on what was then one of the city’s most exclusive streets. Moore was a founder of Washington Water Power Co., now known as Avista Corp., and he initiated garden construction.

The garden evolved into a mix of Victorian and Arts and Crafts styles and was expanded over a period of years by Judge and U.S. Sen. George Turner and his wife, Bertha, who took over the mansion after Moore died at a young age in 1895.

The mansion was torn down in 1940. The city acquired the property in 1945, more than a decade after care of the garden had stopped. The garden adjoins the historic Corbin House, now operated as the Corbin Art Center, to make up Pioneer Park.

Spencer said that Manly Stanley and High Falutin are ideally suited for skidding trees. They are a mix of quarterhorse and Shire draft horse, which means they are at once strong and light on their feet, more so than full-bred draft horses. The mixed breed was typically used for skidding logs in the old days, Spencer said.

During Thursday’s operation, the pair moved well under Spencer’s commands, but wanted little attention from visitors to the site. They kept their heads either pointed downward or straight ahead.

“Sometimes they listen and sometimes they don’t,” Spencer said. He described them as having the personality of adolescents. “They squabble like teenagers.”