Timber-Dealing With the Trees

Early settlers were not prepared for the trees that they would have to clear in order to made the land suitable for crops or livestock. Cedars, Douglas firs, and other species of evergreen trees grew to immense size. Trees 8-10 feet across at the base and over 200 feet tall were not unusual, and much too large to be managed by one or two men with primitive tools.

One dangerous but common method was to drill two holes at an angle into the base of a tree, on opposite sides so that they more or less met in the middle. Fires would be stoked in these holes and tended for as many days as it took the core of the tree to burn out, then the tree would fall on its own.

In his memoir, Pioneer Reminiscences of Puget Sound, Ezra Meeker describes his experience: “…I hastened to the burning trees to start afresh the fires, if perchance, some had ceased to burn. Nearing a clump of giants, two hundred and fifty feet tall, one began toppling over toward me. In my confusion I ran across the path where it fell and while this had scarce reached the ground, a second started to fall almost parallel to the first, scarcely thirty feet apart at the top, leaving me between the two with limbs flying in a good many directions. If I had not become entangled in some brush, I would have gotten under the last falling tree.”

Since these trees, once down, were often too large to move with the technology available. To get rid of them, the boring-and-burning method would be used along the trunk of the tree, and eventually the entire tree would burn to ashes.