Timber: Toil and Trouble in the Big Woods

From the late 1950s into mid-1960s Superior Publishing provided an outlet for Ralph W. Andrews to publish a number photo books of working men of the Pacific Northwest. Timber is one of those books. If one has only a passing interest in how logging used to be then probably one or two books would suffice. On the other hand if you're like me and enjoy collecting all of his works you can still find most of them still available. "Timber" has a number of great photos from when logging started with oxen and then later with donkeys (the mechanical kind not the animal) but it also has some great stories and photos about the terrible fires in Idaho during 1910. There's also the background about the Tillamook Burn of 1933 in Oregon. Most of these books by Andrews have a similar approach which is a number of black and white photos combined with stories told to Andrews or which he's gleaned from periodicals long since discontinued. While Andrews has had his critics for his approach, thankfully there was a person such as he willing to do the work in collecting the photos and Superior willing to publish them.