Log boom

I'm having my coffee in Foreshore Park. A 2 kilometer log boom has been passing for some time. Even after watching log booms for nearly 50 years, I'm still fascinated to watch two tugs maneuver the boom around corners. Tug #2 is steering the back of the boom for the turn into New West.
Coffee over. My significant other's flight from Frankfurt has just landed at YVR.

You're lucky, Nikki. Log rafting is extinct around here. I remember it going on as a kid watching them swing in close to the beach where I grew up to avoid the ebb tide. A lot of neat tugs disappeared when it stopped.

When I was a young kid, my father used to take us boys to Mallet's mill in Maine. It was orginally water-powered lumber mill, with a large mill pond that served both as log storage and power supply. The logs were originally rafted in Maine but Maine put a stop to most rafting. When I was there, the only change to the mill was the water wheel wasn't connected (still there as back-up) and a V12 Detroit 2 stroke powered the all shaft driven mill through a speed reducer.
The whole thing was an OSHA nightmare, with jack-shafts and flat-belts running everywhere, everything spinning the whole time the Detroit was screaming away. As a little kid I was in heaven. I'm sure it is all gone now.

The old Mill might be gone, do not know, but the Family owned Company was still going strong in 2012.
http://www.exploringlincoln.com/2012/06 ... mber-mill/

Same family, different mill. It was in Lee Maine and I remember the Cedar mill, which I also visited. It was "in town" where as the other was up a dirt road. I'm fairly sure the mill I visited in the early 60's is long gone. On that mill, the engine ran the jack-shafts, and you could really hear it bark when a log was fed to the 6 ft diameter blade.
As stated, the Mallet's had been in the lumber mill business for many generations, and the mill I went to was in that location for decades if not longer. I wouldn't be surprised to know it was there from before 1900.
In the 60's the Cedar mill was fairly low production and didn't run every day, only when there was enough of an order to justify the expense. The long wood mill did run every day. For years my dad had a 2' x 1"x8' rough-sawed slab of cherry that came from Mallets mill. He was going to make a cherry table but never did.

I goggle earthed Mallets mill and the old mill on the pond is long gone, It was built out over the water and the stream ran out of the pond , thru the under-shot water wheel. Nothing remains of the old mill, which is not surprising, the cost to bring in into compliance with todays regulations would be many time the value of the mill, but we loose a piece of history and what our fore-fathers did to make it in this country. There were a million ways to die a horrible death in that mill, but the workers ran it without much mayhem.
What I experienced as a kid would have been completely recognizable to a kid born 3 generations before me, only the diesel power would have been at odds with the times.

Here is a You Tube channel that I subscribe to. While it is not a saw mill, the shop is a working machine shop powered by a steam engine and a boiler on the premises.
https://youtu.be/y5a9jGNInLI You Tube has more than a few videos of old-time saw mills.
Between Vancouver and New Westminster there was a dozen or more lumber mills along both banks of the North Arm of the Fraser River. Sadly, they are all long gone. At one time the mills and the local lumber industry may have been the largest employer in this area. A man named Johnny lived three doors down from me and he worked the green chain all of his career. He retired at 65 after nearly 50 years and died in a fortnight.
The 1946-7, C69A Ford Flathead V8 that powers our 1940 Ford was driving a water fire pump at the Mac Millan-Bloedel sawmill at the south end of Boundary Road, on the Vancouver Side. I got the Ford Flathead V8 at an auction.
The original site of this mill is often used as a movie set now. Soon that area will be filled with condominiums.