In Search of Steam Donkeys: Logging Equipment in Oregon

To the people who used them, steam donkeys and other logging equipment made their livelihoods possible. From its beginnings in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to its heyday in the twenties and thirties, to its decline and extinction in the 1950s, steam logging captured the imaginations and hearts of generations of Oregonians. In Search of Steam Donkeys traces the development of the machinery that made steam logging possible-and sometimes dangerous, sometimes lucrative. It describes the surprisingly creative methods that old-time loggers used, modified (and sometimes misused) the equipment they worked with daily; the sometimes funny, frequently poignant, tales of living and growing up in a logging camp; the reminiscences of those who still remember working as whistle punks, riggers, donkey doctors, and hooktenders.