Timber Harvest

Through the help from four videos about timber harvest, I was able to learn a lot about how timber was harvested in the past and about how it is harvested now. Before watching these videos, I was curious about how enormous trees were cut down before they had machines to do it. I wondered this because it didn’t seem reasonable to cut down the tree at once because it may fall on someone or something if it is very large. I learned from the first two videos about harvesting in the early 1900s, that what they do is they have someone climb to the top of the tree and cut the top off. They call that person a topper. This way the big trees don’t come down at once. Then when they do that  a group of people cut down the bottom of the tree. I never realized  before watching the first two videos that a whole team is needed for this job.

On the far left is a photo of people cutting down the bottom of a tree in the early 1900s. In the center of the post is a photo of a topper cutting the top of the tree off.

Another thing I found interesting about timber harvesting was the way it changed over time. During the 1900’s most of the process was done manually, but now most of it is done by technology. One example is that what I described earlier was how they typically brought a tree down in the earlier 1900s. Now they don’t use toppers or a group of people at the bottom of the tree. Instead they use cranes driven by  people. They are shown in the picture on the left.

 

Another way that it changed was the way that they transported the wood. In the earlier 1900s they had to build trains and tracks in order to transport it. Now they just use trucks. This makes it much easier to transport the timber.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *