100 years ago in North Idaho: Single sleigh pulls record-breaking log load from Saddler Creek camp

One might assume that the region’s logging camps would be shut down for the winter, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Winter was, in fact, prime time for hauling the giant logs to the rivers, because the loggers could use sleighs.

The Spokane Daily Chronicle ran a front-page photo of what was “claimed to be the largest number of logs ever placed on a single sleigh and handled by a single team.” The sleigh was piled 22 feet high with 147 logs.

The sleigh was at the Dalkeen Lumber Company’s Camp 7, on Saddler Creek near Priest River. The giant sleigh had become a tourist attraction.

“Practically every able-bodied person at Priest River, Idaho, journeyed on Sunday” to see the sleigh.

The sleigh was ready to be hauled about 4 miles to the river on a road that was nearly level. There were a couple of downgrades, which would need to be sanded so that the sleigh would not pick up too much speed.

The cold and snowy winter of 1921-22 was proving to be a boon to the logging industry. Logs all over the Inland Northwest were gliding their way to the rivers and sawmills.

Also on the date

(From Associated Press)

1915: America’s first official transcontinental telephone call took place as Alexander Graham Bell, who was in New York, spoke to his former assistant, Thomas Watson, who was in San Francisco, over a line set up by American Telephone & Telegraph.

1989: Confessed serial killer Theodore Bundy was executed in Florida’s electric chair.