Our series examining an Image of the Week from the photographic files, by Kevin Warstadt, Edward Connery Lathem ’51 Digital Library Fellow.

Log driving on the Connecticut River c. 1900

Featured above is a photo from a folder labeled “Log Driving.” According to Robert E. Pike ’25 in Log Drive on the Connecticut, log driving began on the Connecticut River in 1869 and ended in 1930.

Pike describes the dangers of the job:

Log driving was a profession that was dangerous to life and limb, not just some of the time, but every minute. From the moment he began to break out the frozen rollways till the day, sometimes six months later, that the drive was safe in the booms hundreds of miles downriver, the riverman was flirting with death a dozen times a day. The heavy, slippery logs that he had to roll, pry, and lift would fly back at him and knock him literally to kingdom come, or he himself would slip and a whole rollway would pass over him, leaving not enough to bury.

You can read Pike’s full article here and find more photos from the “Log Driving” folder here.