NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC • September 22, 2021
By the early 1800s, New England became a lumber powerhouse and, by the 1830s, Bangor, Maine was the world’s largest lumber shipping port. Millions of logs traveled down the Penobscot River to be used for boat building and construction throughout the U.S. and the Caribbean. As resources were sapped, the industry moved west. A potential shortage of wood and woodlands helped to inspire the preservation and conservation movements during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kids can get an idea of what that old-fashioned manual labor looked—and sounded—like at lumberjack shows in forestry regions across the country. At Timber Tina’s Great Maine Lumberjack Show near Bar Harbor, there’s a smell of sawdust in the air and frequent thwacks of metal blades on wood. Plaid-shirted jacks (and jills) use rope loops to scale trees or axes to reduce logs to round “cookies” in seconds.