Men with long pike poles balance on a log-choked Muskegon River near Newaygo, working a pine log drive around 1900.
These “river hogs” were the crews who kept floating logs moving toward sawmills downstream — sometimes breaking up dangerous jams like the one pictured. In Michigan’s lumber era, logs were often rolled into rivers and pushed along during spring high water, then corralled in booms and sorted by company log marks near the mills.
Do you have family stories of log drives, river work, or the old mills around Newaygo County?
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