Art & Words by
HOWARD B. TAYLOR

As lumber became harder to find where it could practically log itself, the old timers began to use oxen or horses with flash flooding. This was done on the middle fork of the Willamette River by Booth Kelly Lumber Company by using the natural storm floods and no dams. Logging was with horses, the logs floated to Springfield and were caught by boom. On the coast fork, above London Springs, Joshua Rouse built a water-powered sawmill. It was a compliment to one built on our stump ranch on Mosby Creek.

Joshua built a series of flash dams up the river and logged into the river below them and into the ponds above them as pictured. The dam gates were a series of planks held in place by the pressure of the water and secured from floating away with a short length of rope. When these planks were jerked out, the water flooded the river, floating the logs to the mill pond.