LOCALadk
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FROM LOGS TO LYRICS
B A S S R O C K G U I T A R S
One day during the winter of 1853, a lumberjack working on the east side of Schroon Lake cut down a red spruce tree. e tree was about
one hundred ten feet tall and about fieen inches in diameter at the stump. Aer cutting it to lengths measuring 13 feet, 4 inches (the length
needed for scaffolding downstate, where a building boom was taking place), he hammered a log mark on both ends to indicate who owned
it. is mark would be entered in the Queensbury Book of Log Marks and would insure that the log went to the correct sawmill. en, with
a team of horses, he skidded it over the snow to the frozen lake, where it sat with hundreds of other logs waiting for the spring thaw and high
water to float them down the lake to the Schroon River, to the Hudson River, and finally to the Big Boom and the mills in Glens Falls. Only
this tree didn't make it. It was too dense, and like so many others, it soaked up water, grew heavy, and sank to the silty bottom of the lake.
Author: Rick Hackett | Photos: Ethan Atwood
