Thursday, September 10, 2009

Wagon Train Out of the River Lowlands

Pictured above is the lead wagon of a wagon train hauling timber out of the Tombigbee River bottomlands on the Fulton & Pontotoc Road (later Bankhead Highway and US Hwy 78)to the sawmill in Fulton. This photograph was taken ca. 1910. Click photo for larger resolution image.
 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure where the sawmill that was owned by my maternal grandfather, Arthur Griffin Dyer,was located - somewhere in the sw Marion County to over in the Hatley area across the stateline. All the pictures that I've seen, there are numerous men sitting atop that load of logs being hauled to mill and what I don't understand is what kept those logs from shifting and seriously injuring those posers - worse yet, killing them! What was the attraction besides getting their picture taken?!? bettye

Mona Robinson Mills said...

Incredible to think of the huge virgin timber that was harvested during that period of time.

Anonymous said...

I keep coming back to this picture trying to decide if that huge tree trunk was rotten/hollow as depicted by the large blackened "center". With that diameter, can you imagine how many wagons were needed to haul it all to the mill? It had to be a very tall tree.

Before Interstate 20 was completed across Louisana and Mississippi, we chose to drive US 82 from Texarkana, TX/Ark to Lake Village, Arkansas (this led us to Greenville, MS) which was a two lane highway held together with kudzu! and when we came up behind one of those old logging trucks, we knew we had a long slow drive for many miles at a time because the "no passing" signs were plentiful along southern Arkansas. I often wondered how many pulp mills were in this southern part of Arkansas because in these years, we didn't have air conditioned cars so we rode with the windows down and the smell was unbearable.

I say thank goodness for air conditioned cars and Interstates! bettye