In distant past, logging accidents could end in disaster, deaths

‘SNUB LINE BROKE ON RAM DOWN.” The reader can be forgiven if he has no idea what that headline meant in the Bangor Daily News a century ago. The editor who wrote it for the edition of March 12, 1908, however, expected the average Bangorean would know exactly what it meant: A bad logging accident had occurred deep in the woods. The subhead read, “Teamster terribly injured and three horses killed on Square Town.”

Square Town or Squaretown Township was located just over the Somerset County line west of Greenville. The plot thickened a few days later when another snub-line broke on another ram-down located on “the Churchill tract” farther north. The Bangor Daily Commercial declared on March 16, “FOUL MURDER TRIED: Dastard Cut Snub Warp With Seeming Intent to Kill.”

Terrible accidents were not uncommon in the woods, but would some crazed killer actually resort to cutting someone’s “snub warp”? Could this dastard have gotten the idea from the incident at Square Town?

The end of the logging season was near. Teamsters were hurrying the harvest to the banks of streams and rivers in preparation for the drive to the sawmills. A ram-down was a steep declivity in a logging road. A firmly anchored snub-line was attached to a sled laden with logs to keep it from building up uncontrollable momentum as a teamster hauled it on the ram-down. A snapped snub-line meant catastrophe.

In the Square Town incident, George Murphy, 26, of Waterville hooked onto the snub-line on a long, steep and crooked ram-down and started his four horses hauling 12 big spruce logs down over the pitch. When on the brow, the snub-line parted and the heavy load bounded ahead with terrible momentum, according to the Bangor Daily News.

There was a slight turn about 50 yards from the brow of the hill. “Murphy’s only chance was to rein his team around this turn but it was like steering a landslide, the horses being on a dead run with 10 tons of logs grinding down upon them,” said the newspaper. “[T]he terrible momentum of the heavy load rammed them out of the road at the turn and horses, driver, sled and logs crashed into the great spruces which lined the road, the load turning a complete somersault and the big logs burying Murphy and his horses under tons of spruce.”

Murphy was extricated from the disaster unconscious. An initial diagnosis before the doctor arrived placed his injuries at two broken legs, a broken shoulder and jaw, a fractured skull and five ribs, scalp cuts and “symptoms of internal injuries.” Three of the four horses were dead.

The ram-down had been the scene of several other disasters resulting in the deaths of two or three men and several horses. “The cause of this morning’s accident is said to be the old story of paying out too much slack, and the sudden ‘snubbing’ which brought too much strain on the line,” reported the newspaper.

The second incident, allegedly involving a murder attempt, occurred when another teamster, John Peterson, a Swedish immigrant, was hauling logs for Hollis & Stowell “on the Churchill tract” near enough to Somerville Junction for him to return to his “hovel” there each night. Somerville Junction is located near where Churchill Stream enters the Kennebec River’s West Outlet to Moosehead Lake.

Peterson set his load of 10 “good-sized sticks” at the top of a 300-foot ram-down. While the snubman, one Garrick, was making the hitch, he and Peterson discussed the accident that had occurred at Square Town.

“With the remark that he guessed he could hold Peterson’s load all right, the snubman paid out a reasonable amount of slack and gave the word to start the team,” reported the Commercial.

“As the first bobsled went over the brow of the hill, before the slack was taken up, Peterson was startled by a cry from the snubman, Garrick, who yelled: ‘Ditch ’em! Ditch ’em!’ Peterson … pulled the leaders into the ditch, quickly following with the pole horses,” said the newspaper. “This was accomplished just as the rear bob went over the brow of the ram-down and the load began to speed. Peterson jumped and the plunging of the front sled into the ditch broke the pole bar, releasing the horses. The load swung around and rolled over, scattering the logs over many yards of the logging road.” Driver and horses miraculously escaped serious injury.

Garrick said that just as the team took the pitch a stranger, apparently a woodsman, dashed from the trees, cut the snub-line with an axe and disappeared back into the woods. Garrick was viewed as a man of integrity and he had no quarrel with Peterson, said the newspaper. He said he believed the suspect to be a member of a crew operating a few miles away. Peterson thought he knew the man, who had been working on the upper Churchill during the past winter. The animosity between them had begun with an incident when they were living in Sweden 20 years ago.

Garrick and some others from the Hollis & Stowell crew visited the camps on the north Churchill looking for the culprit, but he had left for home. As for Peterson, he loaded his horses on the train and headed for his home in Willimantic.

Such stories as these may not be completely accurate. They were transferred by word of mouth, possibly through several sources and over the telephone, and then polished up by harried reporters who were paid to keep their accounts short and snappy. One thing is most likely true, however. For the rest of that season and a few to come, the daring men who pitched headlong down the ram-downs in the Maine woods with a few tons of “sticks” chasing them kept a close eye on their snub-lines.

wreilly@bangordailynews.net