A Life in the Woods: Russell Fletcher

Peter Chapman: Did they flume logs on Kootenay Lake, too?

Russell Fletcher: Oh, yeah. There was one up there at Boswell at Cummings' place, you know, coming out of Goat Creek. There was a flume there and they had a flume out at Grohman Creek.

Peter Chapman: Grohman?

Russell Fletcher: That's right here, down here about a mile and those were the only flumes I think that took out any volume of logs, but that's years ago you know.

Peter Chapman: Did you work fluming logs?

Russell Fletcher: I worked cutting right-of way, making brackets, and putting' 'em in, nailing the lining in them and I worked at Boulder Creek, that's out here by Salmo, when they were fluming logs and I was there for the whole summer and they had to flume anyway 60,000 a day anyway to keep the mill going because it was a gunshot feed and it had steam loaders and niggers and everything else in there. But Hicks', they only had a small mill. He cut white pine for Powell's, for match plank.

Peter Chapman: Did Powell have its own logging crews?

Russell Fletcher: Actually no. There were a few places they operated, but they had a logging camp out on Lost Creek. That's below Salmo. And it was on the old Hanna limits and they summer logged there with chutes. They used trail chutes.

Peter Chapman: Can you explain that?

Russell Fletcher: Huh?

Peter Chapman: Explain that, please. They used what chutes?

Russell Fletcher: They were trail chutes and they used grease on them.

Peter Chapman: No water in them?

Russell Fletcher: No, you'd only wash away your ground, wash away your chutes.

Peter Chapman: I don't think I understand. Were they made of wood?

Russell Fletcher: Yeah. They were made out of probably fir or tamarack or hemlock and they put down the ties and they hewed one side of this timber. They were probably thirty feet long and they put them in so that they at were a cradle like that, and that side was hewed with a broad ax. It was smooth. Well, they would start up a hill, they would skid to this chute and then they would role them into the chute and they would have a single horse there with a draft chain and they'd have a swamp hook. They put it in the back log. That would be a big log because it wouldn't be pulled out of the chute sideways and they would have a space between the log so that when one --- you started your first log. It bumped the other one and bump bump bump away they went. Well, you'd haul that out to where it was steep enough it would run by itself. It would run down to the next flat or semi-flat and another horse would pick it up and take it on the next way and so on and so on. And they run it right into a pond, an artificial pond.

Peter Chapman: Why didn't they use water? Why did they use grease instead?

Russell Fletcher: Because the water would wash away your foundation for your chutes.

Peter Chapman: But they did use water for some didn't they?

Russell Fletcher: Well, I don't know. I never see them using water on chutes.

Peter Chapman: What is the difference between a flume and a chute?

Russell Fletcher: Well a flume is a four foot trough. Its 90 degrees here, and its laid out and engineered and it goes around curves and everything like that. And there's a bent every eight foot. See and the bracket was probably eight foot long. You cut your timbers for the side. They were all cut on the bevel and you nailed them together and there were braces to hold that up. Well, they lined this all up and they double boarded it, put in the first board --- it was just rough lumber --- and the next sheeting, they broke joints. You see what I mean? Well, when they got this thing done, it leaked. Then before they went on any further, they took 6x6 or something like that and cut it on the diagonal so that it was flat on one side and like that and that went in the bottom so that a small log that got in there, it didn't wedge the flume apart, you see. Well when there was a full head of water on, that floated the log and they would roll them in. And they would float down to a pond or whatever.

Peter Chapman: Would they skid them to the top of the flume with horses or would they hand log?

Russell Fletcher: Oh, it wasn't hand logged. It was done with --- most of the skidding was done with horses. And there were teams and singles. But they didn't start right at the top of the flume. There would be places they were skidding to all the way along the flume. They built skids that went --- the skids were level with the top of the flume and they'd roll the logs out and roll them in and away they would go.

Peter Chapman: There would have to be a lot of timber to justify making a flume?

Russell Fletcher: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You had --- to justify it, you had to have it so you could cut millions of feet but you had --- most mills --- outfits like that --- you had to produce a lot of flume timber, like Waldie over on Arrow Lakes, at Needles, in the Whatshan country. You been in there or ever heard of it?

Peter Chapman: I know where it is.

Russell Fletcher: Well they logged that and towed them logs to the head of the flume to the lower lake and they flumed it down. It was three miles or four miles down. And it went into Arrow Lakes and was boomed and towed down to Castlegar.

Peter Chapman: And is that the kind of creek where they would use a flume?

Russell Fletcher: No. There has to be a quite lot of timber. There has to be quite a lot of water and the best way there was to build flume was --- is to make a pilot road up --- you had to do it on those old days, you had to do it with pick and shovel and a team of horses. You'd get a rough road so that you could get one of these steam tractors up there and they would set up a little portable mill and that would saw that stuff right there and make the bracket and everything and start the flume building and boy and they'd put the water in and they'd have a gate down --- and they would build a hundred or two feet a day you know with about six, eight men and they would throw the timber in and the brackets in and the different dimension of stuff for the bents and all that in there and it would float down and it had a gate in there and it would hold them. That was the best way to do it, but when they first making flumes in this part of the country they used to build them for a dollar a foot.

Peter Chapman: Someone would take a contract to build a flume?

Russell Fletcher: Most of it was contract. Now the one out at Boulder Creek, I was there when Jacobs was building the flume there, and Green --- A.H. Green was an engineer and surveyors here. I guess you've heard of them. I worked for them a lot. And they built that flume coming out of the Whatshan. They built the flume coming out of Archibald Creek out here by Meadows. There was about four or five miles of flume there. And where else did he --- I don't know now. He built a lot of stuff. He got into all kinds of jackpots --- aerial trams and airports and building buildings, like the Medical Arts, that's one of his jobs. Things like that.

Peter Chapman: How long were the logs that they could put down a flume?

Russell Fletcher: Well a lot depended on how stiff a curve they had and most logs at that time were all standard lengths like 12, 14, 16, 18. Well that would take quite a curve. It was the cedar poles that were the hard ones to flume. If it was a hard turn, and the butt --- of course they put them in with the top down so that the water was working on the butt. They would go and they'd ride up on the side of the flume and sometimes they didn't fall back into the flume. They fell on the outside. But most of those kind of curves they rectified them by making them more of a compound curve. And, eh, well that's the way it went anyway. From here to --- out the [?] to Waneta there was a flume in Clearwater. That was [ Mankin?] had a flume in there. And Hall Creek had a flume in there. That was a four-footer. This one at Clearwater was for lumber. They used to make a flume with a 2x12 at the bottom and a 2x12 at the sides like that and the lumber come from a sawmill. It would go floating down there pretty good. Didn't take so much water neither.

Peter Chapman: How did they keep the flumes filled with water?

Russell Fletcher: They didn't keep them filled. They had a dam and they would make a flood when this dam would get full and they needed more logs. They'd put on the--- and these fellas most of them were contract loggers. They would have probably several thousands on skid ready to roll in. Well, as soon as this water started to come, they would roll them in as fast as they could.

Peter Chapman: Would the same crew that did the logging do the fluming or would they be logging and ---

Russell Fletcher: They would be the ones that put them into the flume. Outside of that they didn't do anymore to it.

Peter Chapman: Did they have to put people along the flume to make sure that ---

Russell Fletcher: Not necessarily. As long as you had the water it would shove them right through. But the trouble was at a lot of these places where it was going into an artificial pond, these artificial ponds would probably only enough say a 100,000 or 150,000 feet of logs. Well when they would flume, these ponds would get full, then the logs would start to pile up at the end of the flume like a big jam.

Peter Chapman: Where would they go from the pond? Where would they go after the pond?

Russell Fletcher: Go into the jackladder of the mill.

Peter Chapman: So the mill was on the creek with a dam?

Russell Fletcher: Well, it would be down pretty well to the railroad you see where they --- they would be only a hundred yards from the railroad and in this particular case, they built a big planer there and they yard dried at that time and run it through the next year. But fire got in there and burned out a lot of stuff.

Peter Chapman: What mill was that one?

Russell Fletcher: That was the old O.I.&M., that was O'Neill, Irwin and Mann, that was an American outfit.

Peter Chapman: And it was down ---

Russell Fletcher: Down at Boulder Creek about three miles this side of Salmo. On the road side. That was at Boulder Creek. That was good timber.

Russell Fletcher: but when the pond would get full, the logs would jam at the end of the flume and make a big log jam and they would toot the whistle at the mill for them not to flume anymore but they --- as long as there was water running, there space in the flume they put in logs and they would have a jam up the flume for maybe a mile, you see. Well then the dam --- they had to cut it all out and break this jam at the mouth of the flume and clean the pond all out and then they could flume again by opening the gate up there at the dam and they'd sluice them all out.

Peter Chapman: But they would flume a years worth of logs at a time, is that right?

Russell Fletcher: How much?

Peter Chapman: How many board feet would they flume at a time?

Russell Fletcher: Oh, I suppose they would flume a hundred thousand, a hundred and fifty thousand feet. That was all the pond would hold you see. Its not like it went into a lake.

Peter Chapman: So at that mill they had to be fluming the mills continuously to keep the mill going.

Russell Fletcher: Well, not continuously. They had to keep logging and as soon as they needed logs for the mill, they'd start fluming again.

Peter Chapman: So would the mill shut down when ---

Russell Fletcher: No, no. They kept on a sawing. Mills don't shut down for anything ---

Peter Chapman: But if ---

Russell Fletcher: Unless they got a breakdown.

Peter Chapman: Right. Or they run out of logs?

Peter Chapman: Why wouldn't they [Lamberts] put the sawmill by the railway, why did they have a flume for lumber? Why didn't they flume the logs all the way down?

Russell Fletcher: Well, the log flume cost a lot more to build and they would saw up there at the end and use their slab for fuel to steam your --- they were an all-steam outfits --- for steam for power and when it went --- it was sawed into --- on the head saw on the carriage, it went to the edger and it was edged, then it went to the trimmer and it was trimmed, and it dropped into the flume and away

Peter Chapman: How long could you make a flume?

Russell Fletcher: Huh?

Peter Chapman: The flumes must have leaked water

Russell Fletcher: Oh, sure.

Peter Chapman: So how long could you --- how long could a flume be before it would loose the water?

Russell Fletcher: Oh, it didn't loose it that fast. You know what they did? Up at the top end they shovelled in a hole bunch of horse shit. And it went down and the leakage sucked in this fibre from the horse dung and she quit leaking. That was a caulking proposition. Oh, there might be a little drip, but not leak. You know, water didn't get away on you.

Peter Chapman: So how long could they be?

Russell Fletcher: Huh?

Peter Chapman: How long would a flume be?

Russell Fletcher: Oh, the ones there at Lumberton, they had a 15 mile --- 15 mile main line and then branch ones coming in. That was the biggest mill that was ever in the Interior.

Russell Fletcher: They used a lot of chutes in the Slocan, along Slocan Lake in little patches. I guess small timber sales, and they would shoot 'em into the lake.

Peter Chapman: Is that ---

Russell Fletcher: into a boom.

Peter Chapman: Is that --- A chute is without water?

Russell Fletcher: Oh, yeah, they were steep, you know. They didn't even [?] grease 'em you know.

Peter Chapman: What kind of grease would they use when they greased them?

Russell Fletcher: Oh, darned if I know. Some of that fish stuff. Cheap stuff.

Peter Chapman: Somebody's job was to ---

Russell Fletcher: Huh?

Peter Chapman: Someone's job was to spread this on the flume?

Russell Fletcher: Oh, yeah. I don't know how the heck they put it on now. Seems to me they had a old brush something like an old [?] brush and they give it a sweep here and there and as soon as a log would come along and it would spread it out for them. Sometimes in the fall when the frost comes, they get frost in them chutes and make them pretty slippery.

Peter Chapman: Where did they come from?
Russell Fletcher: Oh, out in the Slocan, some from along around Castlegar. Some come from out here around Salmo, and yeah they come from all over. Somebody clearing a little piece of land and there was a carload of pine on it, white pine, he'd take it down and he'd get about $17 a thousand for it, which was quite a lot of money in them days. Of course all those weren't match stock timber. It was the second growth that was the best, stuff that run up to about eight to a thousand. That was the class of stuff that was best for match plank because there was that space between the windrows of limbs you see, the five limbs. That would be all clear there. Well, they would saw that up into planks and dry it for a year --- air dry it, and roofed, before they used it because they didn't want kiln dried stuff because kiln dried stuff because kiln dried stuff has lost its life. You see, its more brittle. In those days they made a match that was about 2" long. That a household match. And where the dies set in, one cut into the other and that left a little streak in it so they rolled that and that closed that thing up pretty well.
And then of course they went on through the mill on these conveyors and belts and stuff to get dipped in paraffin and get the different stuff on them to make the match head. When this stuff was sawed and air dried they would put it through the planer and it was dressed to 2" even. Don't want no waste, you see. So all that stuff was kicked out, like the knots and the blue and the bark and all that and it went into another bin and was sold here for $5 a load. It was great kindling and in the summer time it was great for cooking on. You could put a little fire on the one end of your stove and the first thing you had a [?]. It was great stuff. Didn't cost much neither. Five dollars for a cubic cord. So they delivered it besides. And ---
Peter Chapman: And did they not run --- did they run all year round at Powell?
Russell Fletcher: At the match block factory because they had piles of lumber that was being air dried, some would be in Salmo, some in Slocan City, some way down probably Castlegar, some in the Pend Oreille, some over by Creston and when they needed it, they'd just load it and ship it in and it went through the planer, and went through the slasher and the gang saw and went into blocks and went into the cars. There was about --- sometimes there were probably 15-20 girls there chopping the knots out and bum grain and crooked grain and that. See crooked grain was no good for a match because, you know a woman takes a match by the --- as far away from the head as she can and scratch it and if it's crooked grain it breaks, but if it's straight grain it works. Oh, of course they had all different lengths of matches, too. It depends who was buying it and what kind of match they were making. They shipped to Eddy Match, they shipped to Pembroke, they shipped to the Ohio Match. There were different match companies. They even shipped some to England and some to South Africa. Those were trials, I suppose for experimental [?]. Yeah, those were put into -- packed in the case and the cases was all locked, strapped together.
Peter Chapman: When they were shipping them to Eddy Match, did they put them in cases?
Russell Fletcher: No. No. Those were loose in --- they get those big automobile cars and they would shoot them in there and shovel them back until you got it right up to the roof because the pine was light. It was trying to get the tonnage into it you see.
Peter Chapman: Did you load railway cars by hand?
Russell Fletcher: Huh?
Peter Chapman: Was it done by hand?
Russell Fletcher: Loaded --- they were shoveled back by hand because you couldn't get a conveyor to run it up into the far end. You had to keep throwing them back as they come down the shoot. These are ones that had gone through where the girls were and been all graded out and they went through and they went into the car on the floor and you had a big scoop shovel --- about a number ten --- and it was hammered out flat on the back face so you got a great big shovel full.
Peter Chapman: What would they ship to Powell, the planks?
Russell Fletcher: Yeah. When they were dry and they needed them there to make match blocks out of, they put on a crew and they loaded them on flat cars and take her in.
Peter Chapman: How big were the planks?
Russell Fletcher: Oh, it was all 2" stuff and sixteen footers. But they were always about 12" wide
Peter Chapman: Did they have to be quarter sawn or could be ---
Russell Fletcher: No, no. They didn't quarter saw. It was just the way they cut it on the carriage. They put a log on there and they cut it off, slabbed it, cut it off, got it in probably to where a plank would be 6 or 8 inches wide. They turned it down and they took the slab off again and there would probably be some one by four and some two inch stuff running up until it got to be about that size. And then they turned it down again and they cut it right up. And then it went through to the edger and that was edged. You see that bark side was edged.
Peter Chapman: They would only take white pine?
Russell Fletcher: They were just buying white pine.
Peter Chapman: When did the match block factory close?
Russell Fletcher: Oh, it was about the time that Shaffer Hitchock built a sawmill out here where KFP was, that was the first mill there. It was a friction feed and you turned the logs by hand, it was cant--- what they call canting them. And from that on that's Kootenay Forest --- KFP built up and built up. See Deer Park Lumber, they owned that thing.
Peter Chapman: They owned what?
Russell Fletcher: KFP at one time, but they got out of that some way by selling out or buying Deer Park Lumber out, I don't know just the particulars about this. But then it developed into a bigger mill where they cut around sixty five, seventy thousand a day, but by that time they had resaws and gang saws and all that kind of stuff in there, but they were just cutting mixed logs then, they weren't cutting pine for Powell's. By that time you see, this match block business was gone out because the paper match come in, but you could still get wooden Eddy Matches in little boxes --- forty ---
Peter Chapman: Eddy Match bought Shafer Hitchock, is that right --- at one time?
Russell Fletcher: I can't tell you about that. See, I wasn't interested in that. I scaled out there a couple of years. This was when Cady had that, that was Shaffer Hitchcock. L.M. Bruce was the first one that had that outfit. They were Sandpoint people. And he got killed and it was Shaffer Hitchcock after that. But Eddy Match is still in existence back in Hull, Quebec, you know. You see their matches. Yea. But they logged a lot in the Lardeau. That's where they got most of their logs and they got an awful lot of logs up above Kootenay Landing up in Summit Creek, in there, back in Boundary Creek. That was oh, I guess --- an awful lot of spruce in there.

Peter Chapman: Did you ever work for the Forest Service other than timber cruising?
Russell Fletcher: Yeah, after I got older, I worked on the lookouts for four years.
Peter Chapman: Which ones?
Russell Fletcher: I was on Beaver. That's out there by Fruitvale and I was on Copper over here at the head of Forty-nine Creek. I put three years on that one.
Peter Chapman: What was it like?
Russell Fletcher: Oh, it was all right. You were up in the air and you don't have much company. You had to go and pack your water about from a mile away --- go down oh about 1500 feet, pack up your drinking water. It was nice up there. I use to do a little gun stockin' ---
Peter Chapman: Making gun stocks?
Russell Fletcher: Yeah. Oh, I make probably forty or fifty of them. Yeah. [Turn off tape recorder.] I worked on the lookout and then I --- I was on the cubic scale survey for a year and a half. That was one of my long periods that I worked steady. And I went with Joe Logus --- Rogus. Do you know Joe Rogus with one arm used to be up in the Lardeau?
Peter Chapman: But tell me about the fire lookouts. I'd like to hear about working on the lookouts.
Russell Fletcher: A lot depends on what one your on. At that time it was cheap to have fire lookouts because they covered the country and they were radio hooked up --- two way layout--- and you were --- you're house was all wired up for lightning you know, copper down all the ridges, and everything. It was sometimes in places where there was no water so you had to pack water. But you generally had a barrel there with eaves trough, you'd get water for washing. It had a --- when you got there, there was still snow so you filled it up and kept filling it with snow, but it was nice up there. Nobody bothered you. That is, a fella that can live alone. I had a radio up there, I'd turn it on in the morning after we had our sked you know. They call you at a certain minute and you were there in the morning and then they call you at night and you can call in if you have a smoke or fire someplace, to report it and if an airplane is going by, you can talk to him but I begin to loose my hearing and besides I was 65 years old so I figured well it would be nice to be down where you could have an ice cream cone once in a while and you have Saturday and Sunday off. Up there you have twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, but its nice. I kind of enjoyed it.
Peter Chapman: One lookout was Copper Lookout
Russell Fletcher: Yeah, that was a good one. It was seven thousand eight hundred.
Peter Chapman: Which ranger --- Nelson district?
Russell Fletcher: Oh, yeah, its only out here, its only out here a little ways. Up 49 Creek
Peter Chapman: Were they busy fire years, the years that you were on?
Russell Fletcher: Well, at that time, I used to have trouble down there around Crescent Valley. The Doukhobors were on to setting fires and they were building that road on the Blueberry cutoff and there was some pretty bad lightning strikes. I was picking them up when they were just little --- Copper Lookout was over there. I could see over here to Five Mile Creek, past Granite Creek, I could see in there. Another place I could see --- where was that? --- I could look from Copper clear over to McGregor. That's over on the main lake by Cultus Creek. And I could see down into the States there --- what was name of the mountain now? Anyways, up behind Northport. And I could see that one. There was an awful lot of lookouts across the line, but they weren't all manned. But if they had a bad year they would man them, you know.
Peter Chapman: What was the Copper Lookout like? Was it just a tent or was it a tower?
Russell Fletcher: Oh, no. It was a building, built right on the rock and it was tied down with turnbuckled cables. Yeah. When a storm would hit there, you knew you was awake. I remember one storm there I went to open the goldarned door and --- the screen door, it had screens on --- and the wind just took the screen door and everything and that was the last I saw of it. And it would rain so hard that the wind --- the rain would hit the side of the building. It didn't hit the roof. [Coughs] [?] pretty hot [?] when there was lightening there.
Peter Chapman: Have you ever been struck by lightning
Russell Fletcher: No. But I could --- everything was electrified when there was a big storm on. I was there, I had the radio on and it was so electrified I couldn't turn that button off, insulated as it was. And you had a mixing table there with chrome around it. Lean against that, you could get shock right through your clothes. There was --- it had a wood stove and an oil stove but I never used the oil stuff because it seemed to puff --- I was kind of scared of it, but I used to have to go down about 1500 feet of elevation and get water.