The Sierra Nevada Logging Museum has an extensive array of donated artifacts of all sizes. Some are quite rare. One of the largest, a Willamette “steam donkey” weighs approximately 66,000 pounds. Built in 1916, it was last used near Cherry Lake in Tuolumne County and was donated by Sierra Pacific Industries.
Our Newest Piece of Big Equipment
We received a gift of what we were calling a “Gin Pole”, but is properly called a “Jammer” Getting it to our museum from Dutch Flat was a complicated process, because it is a big and very heavy piece of equipment. Then getting it into its designated space on our grounds involved some complicated maneuvers on the part of Steve Kafka using a big log loader borrowed from the K.W. Emerson Company.
A picture of the actual equipment will be here soon.
This article from our archives describes the use of a jammer at the Stockton Box Mill in West Point.
Click to enlarge
Getting back to the rest of our equipment:
There are three crawler tractors on the site, ranging in size from a small gas-powered Caterpillar Model 30 to a Caterpillar Model 75 diesel. The 75-diesel is rare, being produced only a few years before CAT changed its designation to D8. Crawler tractors replaced steam donkeys for skidding logs.
A fourth tractor, a CAT-D7 was our latest Caterpillar acquisition.
Three logging arches displayed at the Museum site (and dating from various periods) were used to raise one end of logs off the ground, reducing drag and the “nosing in” of logs as they were pulled along the ground.
A logger’s cabin, portable sawmill, a circular 40-foot band saw (two edged) and other large equipment are displayed. Also a lumber carrier, an antique Adams road grader, and a Shay locomotive, our largest, heaviest artifact, are also on site.
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