Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario

Alligator

On our way to Ottawa, we went through Algonquin Provincial Park. What an interesting stop! The visitor center had a lot of information about the history of the forest. This was another case (like in Northern Wisconsin) where the lumber jacks came in and started cutting down the huge white pines, expecting them to last for hundreds of years, and it lasting only several decades. At first they only used the truck up to the first branch, then squared everything because that way the logs could be easily transported by ship to England. Later, as the trees dwindled, they started using more of the tree, but they had problems with forest fires because of all the tree remains from earlier cuts. The lumberman actually encouraged the formation of the Provincial Park to discourage homesteading. The Park is managed like we manage National forests – for multiple uses including sustained lumbering.
The unique stop was at the logging museum. Here they pointed out the unique equipment that had to be used to get the logs to market. Most of this area consists of connected lakes. The lumber was cut in the winter and transported to the lakes. Here they had devise flat or declining iced paths for the huge horse-drawn sleds. There were special ice wagons that took water from the lakes and spread them on the paths. If there was a particularly steep portion to the path, they had a series of pulleys to help slow down the sled. In the spring, they used rafts in the lake to pull the logs through until the next stream. First the horses would pull the raft to one side of the lake and then they would tighten the ropes around the floating logs behind the raft to bring the across. This would be repeated and repeated making about 1-2 miles a day of progress. Eventually, the horses were replaced by ‘alligators’ which had engines in them to move the logs across the lakes. And, of course, the lumber jacks had to create water chutes to cross areas of the rivers where there were too many rapids. This museum was just fascinating, showing the ingenuity of the loggers to get their logs to market.