Identifier
NA 1911 (local)

Repository
Maine Folklife Center

Date
March 12 1986 (Date created)
October 6 1986 (Date created)

Summary

Wright talks about his experiences driving and supervising the final years of Machias River drives; quantities of logs; dates for river drives; job positions in a woods camp; location of dams; the ‘Driving Rock’ in the Machias River; names of river branches; splash dams on small streams; tradition of eating four meals daily; reasons for the end of river driving; scows; the fun of riding down falls; blousing boots to keep feet dry; modernization of river driving by the 1950s; board feet acquired in the final years; spotting roads; his perspective on clear-cutting; length of drives and size of crews; other jobs held by river drivers, usually also for the lumber company; not cutting lumber wood prior to September; red rot; using splash boards to control water flow; tasks of the feeder; size of woods camps; division of labor in a two-man team; introduction of chain saws; and the need to log in different places. Plus Wright’s 5 pp. commentary, “Water Use on the Machias River during 1968.”

Creator and/or Contributor
Robert Wright (interviewee), Edward D Ives (interviewer)

Language
English (Languages)

Other Subject Headings
Logging (Ethnographic Thesaurus (ET))
Log driving--Maine (Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH))
Occupational Folklore (Ethnographic Thesaurus (ET))
Logging tools (Ethnographic Thesaurus (ET))
Lumber camps (Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH))
Foodways (Ethnographic Thesaurus (ET))
Clearcutting (Ethnographic Thesaurus (ET))
Work clothes (Ethnographic Thesaurus (ET))

Temporal Coverage
1940 - 1986

Geographic Coverage
Machias, Maine (Geonames)
Machias River (Geonames)
Whitneyville, Maine (Geonames)
West Branch Machias River (Geonames)
East Machias River (Geonames)
Township 19 (Local)
Bucksport, Maine (Geonames)
Fletcher Field, Maine (Geonames)
Eddington, Maine (Geonames)
East Machias, Maine (Geonames)
Saint Croix River (Geonames)
Cranberry Lake (Geonames)

Materials Designation
sound cassettes (analog)
transcripts
manuscripts

Part Of
Machias River Project

Related Entities: