Early logging photos show the taming — and tarnishing — of Washington state’s old-growth forests
Darius Kinsey documented turn of the century tree cutters in all their gritty glory
Industrial logging wasn’t always seen purely as wanton environmental destruction. In Washington State, clearcutting was once a necessary step in taming the land for habitation and jump-starting a local economy that would pave the way for development of the Pacific Northwest. Initial logging enterprises in mid-1800s Washington existed to supply timber to California’s Gold Rush and the population growth it precipitated. But when the Northern Pacific railroad opened a direct rail link over the Cascades to Tacoma in 1887, and with Wisconsin and Minnesota already grossly depleted by deforestation, Washington and the Pacific Northwest quickly assumed the role of primary timber supplier to the nation, ensuring the region’s rapid development as it entered the 20th century.
In the broad fervor of industry’s westward expansion, ancillary enterprises arose. Darius Kinsey, who left his home in Missouri at the age of 20, found his niche in Washington’s burgeoning economy as the preeminent photographer of logging industry and culture. A diminutive man by all accounts, Kinsey had started out in the hotel and mercantile business upon arriving in Washington in 1889. But photography piqued the young man’s interest, and soon he was lugging a massive glass-plate view camera to remote logging camps, making portraits of men who, like him, had come west to seek their fortune. Such settlements at the time were notorious for their lawlessness and vice — unregulated prospecting fostered a libertine spirit. Sustainability was not part of the vocabulary.
But things were beginning to change. By 1905, under the tenure of naturalist president Teddy Roosevelt, 7.4 million acres of Washington forest were under federal protection. Between 1900 and 1910, new laws were put in place to curb unregulated clearcutting and establish a state forest commission and burn-permit system. In 1907, the University of Washington opened its School of Forestry to nurture stewardship over the state’s natural resources. Over time, total deforestation tactics would be replaced by selective harvesting of mature trees. Though this too would prove problematic in later years.
As a photographer, Kinsey was in the right place at the right time to witness the massive changes taking place in the timber industry. Under his watch, logging was shifting from itinerant crews of prospectors to organized and well funded extensions of big business. We see this in the scale of his images — the locomotives perched precariously on quickly-erected wooden trestles, lines of rail cars loaded with logs the size of small houses, desolate expanses of forest reduced to stumps, and the occasional women and children homesteaders, a sign that wayward lumberjacks were finally beginning to put down roots. One of the main difficulties for harvesting the unruly thicket of Washington’s old-growth forests had been removing felled trees from remote terrain. Trains, and particularly the introduction of the steam donkey engine in the 1880s, helped streamline the process of harvesting ancient cedar, fir, and other tree species. But alongside those large-scale technological developments, and the humbler axes, cross-cut saws, and springboards used by on-the-ground tree cutters, Kinsey’s photographs also highlight the tenacious humanity of laboring souls forging a path toward a new future and a new nation.
Kinsey was still documenting the progression and cultural impact of logging from his Seattle home in 1940 when, at the age of 70, he suffered several broken ribs after falling off a tree stump. The injury ended his career and he died five years later.
At Timeline, we reveal the forces that shaped America’s past and present. Our team and the Timeline community scour history for the most arresting and socially important stories, and use them to explore how we got to now. To help us tell more stories, please consider becoming a Timeline member.
If you are having trouble viewing the payment form above, please click here.