Shipping logs out of Eel Rock.

Photos from internet, kind of like the equipment used at Eel Rock.

My father and his partner shipped millions of board feet of timber out of Eel Rock, back in the early sixties.

North coast timber and lumber must have been the mainstay of the train business. We shippied most all of our logs by rail, some premium logs that were used for "peelers" (Plywod logs) we shipped over the hill to the Highway. Poles we sometimes shipped by truck, but mostly by rail. Peelers had to be stright, tight grain, and no knots. That's kind of hilarious if you've bought any plywood today. You used to be able to buy plywood with "No Defect". Some times you could buy cheap plywood with no more than three "Boats" (patches) in it. The poles had to be straight and long, and we needed a special permit from "The Gestapo" to haul them.

I remember that our freight and packages were delivered to the train station in Eel Rock, but somebody had to be there to sign for them. There was a roofed loading dock on one end of the station and a small shed was the other end. There was a small shed about the size of an outhouse that had a phone and all of the shipping papers in it. You had to have a key to get in. The siding only held about ten railcars. But we had a booming logging operation. The railway had it's own phone system strung along the tracks. It all went away in the '64 flood.

We hauled our logs across the river on one of those long sideways riffles that are so common on the main Eel. The trucks that we used were modified highway rigs that had their bunks widened, lengthened, and had swing down stake-sides welded on. The truckers loved it. They got paid by the thousand board feet that they hauled, and they could haul about twice what they could on the highway. They didn’t have to license their trucks, and they didn’t have to pay fuel tax. So they were in fat city, and hog heaven. The conversations around the landing at lunch were always about how nice that it was to work off-road. They could haul anything that they wanted, any way that they wanted. They could even drag a log behind them if they wanted. Of course they wouldn’t, but the thought that they could tickled the crap out of them. They said the best part about hauling off-road was that they didn’t have to put up with the Friggin’ Gestapo! (CHP). And, OH… The language was much more colorful than I could ever post here! They got pretty graphic about what they thought should happen to the cops, then they would laugh like Hyenas.
I was fifteen at the time that we lived there and my job was to keep the roads and landing watered. I drove an old White brand dump truck with a water tank and a bar spreader across the back. The truck had a five speed main transmission, and a four speed brownie transmission, and a Duplex box. (two gears) Altogether you could be in any of eighty speeds forward or eight in reverse. The truck had square gears and vacuum brakes. I learned early on to be in the right gear before I needed it. The old square geared truck would not shift on a hill, and the brakes would only stop the truck once. If you tried to stop it twice the brakes would heat-up and fail. If the motor died it had a reserve vacuum tank that would stop you once, but then you didn’t dare let off the brakes because the vacuum would be gone. The only good feature was that the driveline emergency brake held good, but if you applied it while it was rolling, it would snap the drive-line in two.

You couldn’t water going up the hill because the road would be to slick to come back down. If you watered going down the hill, and you got too much water flowing, it would run up under your wheels and would start sliding down the hill. I soon learned to use very little water and go real slow. I learned that without even dieing first, like a lot of water truck drivers have.

On days off I would fish in the Eel River. In the fall of the year, half pounders would come up before the fall rains and you could catch them by the dozens. Or, I would go quail or deer hunting. I spent a lot of time swimming and being a boy. That was just yesterday, wasn’t it?