Western Montana has abundant forests and thus forestry has been an important part of the region’s history and economy. Shown below are some photographs of the Forestry Interpretive Center at Historic Fort Missoula in Missoula, Montana.
An overview is shown above. The area under the shed is a sawmill which has occasional demonstrations of the operations of the mill.
Getting the cut logs to the saw mill is one of the challenges of the timber industry. The photographs above show an early rail system with a steam engine locomotive and jammer (that’s the tall thing that lifts the logs on and off the rail cars. The building in the back is a burner where sawdust was burned.
Details of the jammer are shown above.
Engine Number 7 is shown above. The locomotive and tender were built in June 1923 by the Willamette Iron and Steel Works of Portland, Oregon. This gear-drive locomotive was ideal for rough trackage, steep grades and sharp curves—the situation often found on logging railroads. This engine was retired in 1947 and then restored in 1954 when it was used during the filming of the movie “Timberjack.”
The sawdust burner is shown above.
The sawmill at the interpretive center is representative of portable sawmills used in Western Montana from the 1920s through the 1960s. This particular mill used a circle saw as opposed to a band saw. The diameter of the saw blade was a limiting factor on how large a log could be sawn.
If you are going to have a Forestry Interpretive Center, then you have to have Logger Sports. Shown above are some college students honing their skills at log rolling.
