StoryCorps: Paul "Poof" Tardiff - Web Extra

Poof: River driving. OK, let me explain what “river driving” is. First of all, the men would log all winter long. They would go up in November, stay at these camps, never come back to Berlin until about April. And all they did was cut wood, bring it to the edge of a river, haul it to the edge of a big brook, or bring it on frozen lakes. They did that all winter long. They were the lumber jacks.

Now some of them did river driving too. These were the lumber jacks that worked all winter, stayed in the woods and then come springtime, when the water got high and the snow started melting, everything from a hundred miles above Berlin fed into the Androscoggin River. I’m talking lakes, ponds, rivers. Everything feeds into the Androscoggin Valley. So what they would do is they had men that would direct that would across the lakes using boats to the next lake, putting it in that lake, until eventually they brought it to the last lake, which was Lake Umbagog. And they would drive that wood down the Androscoggin River.

Now they used what they called “cat-dogs,” “pick-poles,” they had spike boots and they unplugged logjams. They worked hard at this. They followed that wood all the way down the river until they got into spots that could hold that wood, so they could send it to the mills in Berlin. Not only that, the wood did come down river through Berlin and all the way to Lewiston, Maine at one time. To Rumford, to Lewiston, some of that wood went way down into Maine.
And that’s basically what a river driver did and that’s basically what happened, there’s a lot more to it. They used different types of machines, they had horses. They do the same thing today, but they don’t use the river. They haven’t used the river as a way of conveying the wood to Berlin since 1964.