In 1886, a log jam developed in the St. Croix River, close to Taylors Falls, Minnesota, and St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. It was described at the time by a local journalist as "the jammedest jam" he had encountered, and was very difficult to clear, with hundreds of men working for six weeks to clear it, eventually using steamboats and dynamite. The jam was also a major tourist attraction, with thousands of spectators every day.
Background
After the Wisconsin Territory was established in 1836, large amounts of Native American land were ceded to the United States via the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters. Much of the land was covered in vast pine forests, and logging activities started soon after. This was a winter activity, as the trees were so large that the only way to move them through the forests was by horse-drawn sleds. Teams of lumberjacks cut down trees all winter and collected them by the shores of the St. Croix River or its tributaries. Pine is light and floats well, so the logs could be easily transported downstream by the river. The logs were marked with the relevant company's timber mark and then released into the river when the snow melted and the water rose in spring. Workers known as "river pigs" guided the logs down the river and kept them moving, especially at difficult places like shallows, rapids or sharp bends. Downstream, the logs were caught in the log boom at the St. Croix Boom Site, where they were sorted by owner, bundled into rafts and then sent to the sawmills.
Causes and start of the 1886 log jam
In the area now covered by Interstate State Park, the St. Croix River runs through a narrow gorge, the Dalles of the St. Croix, and makes a 90 degree turn at Angle Rock. The spring of 1886 was very dry, so the water level was too low to transport logs. This began to change when the Clam River dam was blown up by the hermit Robert Davidson, who claimed the dam interfered with his meadow lands. Davidson was later charged for blowing up the dam and jailed for contempt of court. The release of the Clam River water caused the St. Croix to rise slightly. Sluice dams on several other tributaries, including Kettle River and Snake River, were opened as well, and coincidentally, heavy rain storms caused the rivers to rise further. Large numbers of logs were dumped into the river all at once, more than the river or the driving crews working along could deal with. Shortly after midnight on June 13, 1886, while the driving crews were asleep in their tents, the logs were caught at Angle Rock and quickly started to pile up. More and more logs ran onto the jam, including the 15 million feet of the Clam River drive. The Stillwater Messenger reprinted a report from the Taylor's Falls Journal about the start of the jam: An estimated 125 to 150 million board feet of pine became stuck in the log jam. For comparison, the average annual production of pine in the St. Croix valley between 1870 and 1889 was 241 million board feet.
Clearing the log jam
Smaller log jams could be cleared just by human labor, with river pigs releasing key logs, but this log jam was more difficult and dammed up the river. On June 18, 1886, the New York Times reported that the jam was over two miles long and the largest to ever occur in the Northwest, and four hundred men were working day and night to clear it, while it was still growing at a rate of 700,000 board feet per hour. The logs were owned by more than 100 companies, who joined forces and shared the costs of breaking the jam, which were about $75,000 in total. It was feared that the log jam could endanger the abutments of the two-year-old bridge at Taylors Falls, and some logs sticking out of the almost 70 foot high pile were sawn off. In attempts to clear the logs, two steamboats were used to tug at the front end of the jam. Using ropes, land-based steam engines and horses tried to pull out logs from the jam. Around six to eight million feet were released in this way. Finally, it was attempted to use dynamite bombs. On July 2, 1886, a 24-pound dynamite bomb was exploded, releasing a million feet of logs into the water and moving another 15 million feet out of the main jam. This had broken the jam in two, but also released most of the water that had been held back by the jam. As flowing water was necessary to get the logs moving, this could have impeded the work, but rain soon replenished the river. When a channel was cleared through the jam, only the logs on the banks still required clearing. Cleanup work involving at least 70 people was still ongoing in mid-September.
Tourist attraction
Log jams were a major disruption to the sawmills, but also boosted the localtourism industry in Taylors Falls, so were highly welcome events there. Thousands of tourists per day came to see the jam, by special excursion train from St. Paul and by steamboat from Stillwater. Local hotels and restaurants were packed.
The end of log jams
To end the threat of log jams disrupting the industry, lumbermen organized and in 1890, Nevers Dam, said to be the "largest pile-driven dam in the world", was finished and the flow of logs downstream could be controlled.
