Lyle Hibbard
December 5, 1994We go back three generations here in Crook County. My great grandfather was Andrew Lytle. Lytle Prairie and Lytle Creek were named for him. Dad worked for Mack Cornett running sheep and my mother cooked for the hired hands. I was born on the Mack Cornett Sheep Ranch 16 miles east of Prineville where Salmon Creek comes into Ochoco Creek.
We moved to John Day during my junior year in high school. After graduating from high school in John Day, World War II was going on. I couldn't get in the service so I just bummed around. I followed construction and learned to operate heavy equipment.
I was 24 when I went to work for Ochoco Lumber Company and worked there 35 years until my retirement. I ran almost every piece of heavy equipment they had. The first five years I operated a Cat on the road crew. I got tired of fourteen-hour days--going out every morning at 4:30 and getting home at 7:00 every night. When an opening came up at the mill to unload trucks at the pond I took that job.
In the l950's Ochoco was hauling logs on big Kenworth trucks with l2 and 14 foot wide bunks. They were four times larger than a highway truck and hauled up to 200,000 pounds or 18 to 20,000 board feet compared with 5,000 feet on the smaller highway trucks. In 1954 we built a private road from the Keystone Ranch into the mill for those trucks. They were unlicensed and had no load limit so they were illegal on the highway. They had been used only in the woods hauling logs to the reload station.
The private road was built on the south side of Ochoco Reservoir and went up over the rimrock. It came in on Willowdale just east of the Ochoco mill on the back side. They could haul anything they wanted over that road. Sometimes the driver of a highway truck who knew he was overloaded would come in on the private road to avoid the scales. The old road is still being used by farmers and ranchers as a private road.
Those big Kenworths could haul 20 or 25 logs to a load compared to the smaller highway trucks which could carry only four or five logs. Back then logs were huge. I've helped load logs when the shovel in the woods couldn't pick them up. We would let the stakes down and we'd use a ramp to roll the log up on the truck. Before stakes came into use, 'cheese blocks' were used. With the old cheese blocks the logs had to really be stacked just right or they would roll off. Going around a steep curve a load might fall off.
Nowadays, with the smaller logs, the trucks will load 100 and 110 to the load. A three-log load is the biggest log load I have ever seen in the Ochocos. Two on the bunk and one in the middle. It was fun to watch those big logs go through the saw. Back and forth once and the planks would fall off two and three feet wide. People made tables out of those big planks.
About 1955 or '56, Ochoco hired contractors to haul the logs. The first gypos were John Cannon and Jack Nelson. They had trucks with 10 and 12 foot bunks. Some of the other gypos were still using old chain-driven trucks with no rear end. They were very slow; on long hauls the chains might break and sometimes they could hardly make a trip a week.
My job for years was decking logs in the yard during the winter and unloading logs into the pond during the summer with the shovel, or 'jammer.' The mill was cutting 160,000 board feet a day. It took only nine trucks to keep the mill running. In the fall and winter, when logs were decked, the trucks made two trips a day. One truckload was decked and the next one was dumped into the pond. In the spring, the decked logs were reloaded on trucks and taken to the pond. By the 1970's the big off-the-highway trucks were no longer being used. Ochoco's big trucks were sold except for two that were used to haul logs from the deck to the pond.
The logs were dumped into the mill pond over a brow log. The brow log was simply a big log anchored to the ground with cables and stakes. Its purpose was to keep the rolling log from kicking back as it rolled into the pond. In 1977 a new loader, the Terex, was bought and it did away with dumping over a brow log. That system of dumping always broke the smaller logs and caused a lot of tangling which caused extra work. The big logs didn't tangle so much as they would roll and turn free.
A peavey was used to untangle the logs and they would then roll free. Sometimes it took two men to roll the logs free. We'd go swimming once in a while, too. I fell in several times. Sometimes on a weekend Stuart Shelk would come out and help with the rolling. He'd get out on the pond with a pike pole and help push the logs. There were winters when it would get 20 below zero and the pond would freeze solid. Then we'd have to go out and break the ice loose with an axe. One weekend when I was breaking the ice loose, Stuart came by and saw me working alone. He went home, put on some warm clothes, and came back out to help chop the ice.
Another time Stuart was riding with me on the Cat while I was cleaning out the channel where water from Ochoco Creek filled the mill pond. While I was pushing out mud and water, the Cat got in so deep that the flywheel hit mud. It threw mud and water all over him where he was standing over the hole above the flywheel.
The Terex is a big front end loader with grapplers that lifts an entire load of logs. The first Terex Ochoco bought in '76 or '77 cost $280,000. The same machine now costs probably a half million or more. Its tires tower six feet high and cost $6000 each. They are so enormous that the men couldn't change one if it went flat. We would have to have a truck from Les Schwab's come over and change the tire. You couldn't even tell if there was a flat unless the machine was loaded. The 24-ply tires were so heavy that the weight of the machine itself wouldn't flatten them. Only when the machine lifted a load of logs would the tire flatten to the ground and then the machine would almost tip over.
Since I was to be the operator of this new equipment, the very latest on the market, I was privileged to be sent all over Oregon and Washington trying out the new equipment before it was purchased. After learning how to operate the hydraulic Terex, I operated it and the line shovel at the same time. Loading with one and unloading with the other.
I was working on the road crew in 1954 when the workers went on strike. We had just started the road from Keystone Ranch towards town. The strike lasted three months. But I was able to work the entire three months. I ran a Cat in Kinzua and came back to Ochoco in the fall when the strike was settled. Since I was one of the older employees I was able to get back on the road crew without any loss in seniority.
In the 1950's there were at least three strikes against the company but in the last 20 years that I was there there were none. I always felt it hurt us men more than it did the company. I belonged to the union and believed in its causes, but I didn't believe in striking over every little thing, as some did. There were some who would strike over a nickel an hour. As a matter of fact, I still draw a union pension for my years of membership in the Timber Operator's Council.
During spring shutdowns, Ochoco's employees hardly ever drew unemployment. Stuart kept them working. He would bring the road crew in closer to town to work on roads that needed corners widened or straightened. Some of the men were brought into the mill. Back then, unemployment was only $25.00 a week or so, so any job was better than an unemployment check. The management appreciated the employees. You didn't feel like someone was looking over your shoulder. If your job was caught up and you didn't have anything to do you didn't have to try to make work.
I can remember some lean years coming out of the Depression and before Ochoco Lumber Company came in. The town population was about 1000 people and everyone knew everyone else. My uncle had a ranch out of town. He raised potatoes and we always had a lot of potatoes to eat. My father sold dead juniper and pine wood that he hauled in off the desert. He got $6.00 a cord, which was a months rent, but it cost him $1.00 a cord to cut the wood into 16 inch lengths which left him with a $5.00 profit. We ate a lot of venison. Everyone did. Many times we'd bring in a load of wood with a deer underneath the load. And nothing was wasted. Later, he got on with the Forest Service and worked in the CCC camps, too.
Even the folks who happened to own a lot in town didn't have much because there just wasn't any money to speak of. Ochoco came in 1937 and things started picking up right away. World War II moved everything right along.
My fondest memories of working in the timber industry was the early morning rides out into the woods. Although I hated getting up at 4:30 every morning and I dreaded the long trip to the job site, the payoff was the pristine beauty of the woods in spring, summer or winter. Any time of the year. There was nothing more beautiful than going east of town and watching the sun come up. The white, bright snow of winter and the beautiful greens of spring. It was so quiet, no traffic, no houses to ruin the scenery. We were the first ones out each morning and the last ones in at night.
I still love the woods and I still spend time in the woods, hunting, driving over some of those same familiar roads. And with my camcorder I like to go out and shoot pictures of the remaining big trees in the forests of Oregon.