The log drivers on the Klamath River had one of the most dangerous jobs in the logging industry as they herded thousands of logs down the Klamath River to the sawmill in Klamathon near today’s Hilt, Calif.
Known as river hogs, the drivers dressed in wool to keep warm, from underwear to shirts and pants, and wore caulked boots with 42 spikes in the soles.
Men died or were seriously injured trying to clear log jams backing up monstrous log piles. There were two ways to clear a jam, both dangerous. One involved digging through the pile to free the key log holding back the jam. The other method was dynamite. Freed logs sometimes slammed into the river hogs, pushing drivers below water, where as many as a half dozen men drowned at a time.
On the Hessig Ranch, a whirlpool formed when 24 men dynamited a jam. Everyone tried to reach shore, but four men were pulled under the logs or swept into the whirlpool. Only one of the four survived by clinging to a log that emerged from the whirlpool.
In 1902 the town of Klamathon burned down, and the drivers loaded logs on a train instead of floating them down the river.
Source: Overton Hessig, Alice. Looking Back: The California-Oregon Stage Road. Carson City, Nevada: Self, 1978. Print.
