User:Douglas Coldwell/Sandboxes/164

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a workpage, a collection of material and work in progress that may or may not be incorporated into an article. It should not necessarily be considered factual or authoritative.

Big wheels were also known as high wheels, logging wheels, logger wheels, Michigan logging wheels, ^[1] bummer carts, and "katydids." They were a specially designed large set of wooden wagon wheels that could carry several logs at a time that were up to 100 feet in length.

Big wheels were invented by Silas C. Overpack. His equipment could be identified as genuine as it was always painted red.^[2]

Big Wheels could haul logs without the need for icy ground. They didn't sink into mud in the wet terrian of the northern woods as ordinary wagon wheels would in the spring time after the winter thaw. The wheels enabled a team of horses to pull several logs at a time. The logs were held and suspended by a chain that carried the log's weight by the wheel axle.^[3]

Overpack sold three sizes of big wheels: nine feet high, nine and one-half feet high and ten feet high and cost $100 per diameter foot.^[4] Unlike a wagon that carries a load above its axle, these huge wheels carried logs chained beneath the axle. The wheels could carry logs from 12 to 100 feet in length and enough logs to total 1,000 to 2,000 board feet of lumber in a single load.^[5] The axles were manufactured from hard maple and the 16-foot tongues were made of ironwood. The wheels had clad iron rims to protect them from stumps, fallen trees, and rocky terrian. Interior iron rings reinforced the wooden spokes of the wheels. They were pulled by horses, oxen, or tractors.

[edit] History

History has it that when Overpack was a wheelwright in Manistee, Michigan around 1875 one day he was approached by a farmer to build a set of 8 foot wagon wheels. He built these unusually large wagon wheels and sold them to the local farmer. Time passed and later this same farmer returned asking Overpack for an even larger set of wagon wheels. Overpack was very curiosity by this time. He asked the farmer what he was doing with such large wagon wheels. The farmer replied he was using them to skid logs. ^[1]

From then on Overpack's big wheels were part of the Michigan logging history. Many northern states used them and Michigan alone had at least 65 different lumber companies that had them. Michigan's rough and wet forest terrain made logging a winter industry in the eighteenth and most of the nineteeth century. The loggers used frozen ground to skid the logs from the woods to the heads of rails for the railroads or to river banks for further transporting. In the spring they would slid the logs from the banking grounds into the rivers for the log drive to the saw mills. Overpack made logging possible in all four seasons when he began manufacturing big wheels at his Manistee wagon business.^[6]

Overpack solicited the support of the Redding Iron Works Company to aid in supplying his product to the western United States. He needed their aid to help overcome shipping issues which they were able to do with their proximity to the west coast timber industry.^[1] They became then another builder of Overpacks' big wheels.^[7]

Overpack exhibited his big wheels at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago which greatly exposed the product. They were a sensation and quickly caught on in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. He then began manufacturing and shipping his big wheels via railroad to other states and foreign countries including Canada. The U.S. Army Forestry Department even took several pairs to France during World War I.^[8] They were discontinued by 1930.