Local legends abound in nearly every American town. Investigating the origins of some of these scary stories often reveal actual historical happenings. Let’s explore the history that could be behind a ghost story from the Plain Dealing area in north Bossier Parish about a lumberjack ghost who appears with large boots and carries an axe.
Timber has been a thriving economic activity here since the last two decades of the nineteenth century, when Northern forests had largely been over-harvested, and the untouched forests here became more accessible after the clearings of the Great Raft of the Red River. Historically, timber is Louisiana's top agricultural crop and is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Forests cover a little over fifty percent of Louisiana's land area. Forestry and forest products are not only a valuable source of income for the state of Louisiana, but also for Bossier Parish. The value-added to Bossier Parish alone is over $15 million dollars per year.
Dangerous occupations or places are often the start of legends. Perhaps they are meant to serve as warnings. Being a lumberjack, someone who went into the woods to cut down and transport trees, was an especially risky occupation. In fact, by 1948, due to the logging industry’s many deadly or life-altering dangers, like loss of a limb, the Plain Dealing Progress reported on April 8th that the U.S. Secretary of Labor L.B. Swelling had issued a revised Hazardous Occupation Order prohibiting the employment of anyone under 18 years old in all occupations in the industry, with some exceptions such as certain clerical, repair, clean-up, tallying, or camp jobs.
First, the act of cutting and then felling the area’s tall trees could be deadly. Through the early 20th century, lumberjacks would cut down entire forests using axes or large, two-person hand saws. It was difficult, dangerous work even with the arrival of more modern equipment like chainsaws. In 1959, Earl Whatley Jr., a 32-year-old El Dorado, Arkansas man and logging company employee was reported in the Hope Star newspaper as killed when struck by a falling tree.
For lumberjacks, cutting down the trees was only the beginning of the complicated, risky lumber business. Logging also required some lumberjacks to live in very basic camps far away from the nearest towns and cities. Camp life itself was dangerous, with fights and violence breaking out among the isolated workers. The S.H. Bolinger Company’s timber history in the History Center’s book collection points out that these melees were very typically alcohol-fueled.
Timber had to be transported to sawmills for processing from dense forests, miles from the nearest road or railroad. In the early years of the industry, timber was moved using teams of oxen, and later, motorized trucks. Serious accidents could occur while loading the timber. In 1936, Dalton Dees, a 22-year-old man from Springhill in Webster Parish was crushed to death when a log rolled on him while he was loading the logs onto a truck. A luckier lumberman, 32-year-old M.B. McDonald, suffered non-fatal injuries that were reported in the Friday, June 16, 1939, Shreveport Journal. A log rolled onto him when he was loading a truck in the woods near Clear Lake in DeSoto Parish and fractured both his legs and one ankle. Serious or fatal road collisions involving logging trucks were also common. Their heavy loads made such accidents especially dangerous.
The timber, or wood, was split into planks, or “lumber,” in sawmills. The machinery in the mills was highly dangerous. A photo of the inside of a Bolinger company sawmill shows a sign that warns: “Safety First. All moving machinery is dangerous. Visitors Keep Out.” With flammable materials like sawdust floating in the air, fire was also a threat in the mills. Numerous reports of sawmill fires in north Bossier Parish are seen in newspapers from the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. These include the 1895 Cavill & Cavill sawmill and planing mill fire, the 1901 Bolinger sawmill fire, which entirely destroyed the mill, and the 1904 Alden Bridge fire, which started in the boiler room of the Whited and Wheless lumber company’s plant and destroyed the sawmill, the blacksmith shop and much of the company’s train cars, but spared the planing mill and much of the lumber once the wind changed. A 1938 fire at Alden Bridge, in contrast, burned down the planing mill, but spared the sawmill, thanks to the arrival of Bossier City firefighters and their modern equipment.
To learn more about forestry in Bossier Parish, or local ghost stories and the splinters of truth within them, visit the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center at 2206 Beckett Street, Bossier City. Or let us know some stories you have heard! The History Center is located at 7204 Hutchison Drive, Bossier City, LA. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org
For other fun or chilling facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.
Images:
- Oxen pulling logs, Bolinger logging camp near Red Land, North Bossier Parish, C. 1915. Rodney Bellar Collection, Bossier Parish Libraries History Center
- Fighting a sawmill fire C. 1940. Gloria Purcell Saucier Collection, Bossier Parish Libraries History Center
Article by: Pam Carlisle
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