The Pacific Northwest Logging Community, 1920 – 1998

Methodology

Getting Started

The Pacific Northwest timber community is large, scattered over a vast geographical area, and tends toward insularity. It is a community that has enjoyed considerable historical documentation except where its women are concerned. The success of this project, from the first, lay in my ability to establish and maintain solid contacts within the logging industry. I also knew that to be trusted by those I would ask to interview, I would need to become familiar with the business of logging. Consequently, as I absorbed as much information as possible about Pacific Northwest logging, I also worked to establish contact with a logging woman. Portland State University and Washington State University Pullman libraries provided me with plenty of resources about logging, and a former professor at Washington State University Pullman, historian Orlan Svingen, introduced me to my contact, Diane Heersink.

Orlan and his wife Bonnie had long been friends with Diane Heersink and her husband Brian. When Orlan put me in contact with Diane, she was working on her Ph.D. in Education at WSU. Her husband, Brian, had logged all of his adult life. Diane proved a willing narrator, and both she and Brian opened many doors for me into the Pacific Northwest logging community.

Methods and Project Parameters

Searches of local, regional, and national libraries and archives, both public and private, proved conclusively that very little written information exists that pertains specifically to women and the Pacific Northwest logging industry.  Consequently, this project focused on gathering oral histories of women affiliated with Pacific Northwest logging since 1920.  It was around 1920, after World War I, that automobiles changed logging from a transient, and hence largely single man’s occupation, to one that married men with children could pursue.  After 1920 the logging camp no longer characterized the business of logging.  The automobile — specifically the “crummie” –allowed loggers to live in homes away from logging sites.  Consequently, unlike most loggers before World War I, post-1920 loggers worked in the woods to support families and, like many Americans, hoped to obtain some degree of economic affluence.

This project was confined to the wives, mothers, sisters, and adult daughters of Pacific Northwest loggers.  Additionally, all of the women interviewed for this project were affiliated with fallers —  those men around whom the most colorful lore of the timber industry has been built.

I limited to twenty the number of oral histories I sought to collect, and out of some eighteen women contacted, actually interviewed fourteen.  One narrator — Diane Heersink — provided two separate interviews, and one narrator — Norma Corbett — convinced her husband to interview after her.  Heersink’s second interview was not transcribed, and Mr. Corbett’s interview was not included in this project.

Narrators lived within a geographical area bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the east by the Columbia River in Washington and the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, on the south by the California/Oregon state border, and on the north by the U.S./Canadian border.  Most narrators lived within an area centered around the Columbia River.

I also tried to strike a balance in narrators between those whose ties to logging were via large logging companies and those affiliated with independent operations.

All of the oral histories conducted for this project proceeded from a list of twenty-five standard questions.  Despite this uniformity, each interview took on its own character. The interviews have been indexed and partially transcribed and are posted on this website (see oral history transcripts). Terms specific to logging are connected to an on-line glossary.

Finally, this project was reviewed and approved by Portland State University’s Human Subjects Research Review Committee.  For additional information about the approval process for this project, please contact Chair of the Human Subjects Research Review Committee, Research and Sponsored Projects, Cramer 111 Portland State University, Portland, OR. (503) 725-3423.