This is off of my PALMER list, and thought you would find it as interesting 
as I did. A little more insight in to the life and times of our 
ancestors.......Judy

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 I was asked about the use of sawdust as road covering in the late 1800's
 and did some research. I thought I would share these interesting
 findings. Enjoy - Rita Oconto County WIGenWeb Project Coordinator
 https://sites.rootsweb.com/~wiconto/
 
 Question:
 Many years ago I became interested in the various fires that occured in
 the Old Northwest during 1871 and remember reading that many logging
 camps and larger towns actually paved their streets with sawdust from
 the mills so that people could walk them with out getting muddy during
 and after rains. Certainly a very bad idea but a excellent explanation
 as to why these town "went up" like gunpowder kegs.
 
 Can you confirm or deny that this practice did occur?
 
 Thank you,  any reply would be greatly appreciated.
 
 - K. P.
 Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
 
 
 Answer:
 That is absolutely correct. The practice goes back to colonial days, but
 it wasn't until manufacturing wood during the "Industrial Revolution"
 that there was a large enough amount of sawdust to become a problem.
 Unlike now when sawdust is used in pressed wood products and some paper
 manufacturing, sawdust was just a waste byproduct of milling lumber.  A
 BIG byproduct. At first they simply dumped it into the rivers and
 streams the powered the mills. It would then travel to the mouth of the
 rivers and totally clog the bays of the upper Great Lakes. This made
 shipping impossible and that meant the lumber could not be shipped to
 other places. There are old letter and diaries with descriptions of
 sawdust being so thick along the beaches and bays the you could walk out
 on the floating matts (also not a real safe practice).
 
 They burned the bark and scaps, that would not make shims and such small
 usables, in huge tall coneshaped metal stuctures with open tops and at
 night the workers would sit out on the front porches of their cottages
 with the family and watch the glowing red burners against the inky black
 sky until bedtime.  But the sawdust remained a huge problem. It was
 highly combustable and not suited for burners as it would also set the
 surrounding area on fire with sparks traveling on the wind. Someone came
 up with the idea of laying down sawdust on the muddy town roads. Then
 you could not only walk on the knee-deep mud, but the sawdust was also
 "worked into" the mud by traffic to make a kind of improved surface for
 wagon and carriage wheels. And it was free for the hauling. Since the
 most concentrated traffic was in the towns, villages and settlements,
 this was seen as a big improvement. Just the other day, right here,  I
 noticed that sawdust from logging off land for development was used on
 the mud to make a road inland for the heavy trucks. It was very
 successful and took the weight of many vehicles without  getting muddy.
 
 This sawdust was also used in logging camps so the mud from the bare
 ground didn't impede transportation. It was truly dangerous by today's
 standards, and even more dangerous, but absolutely neccessary, by
 yesterday's standards. There were also no building codes back then and
 all the wood structures were put up fast and close together, often wall
 to wall. With lamp oil,  wood stoves, fireplaces, candles, and various
 fuels being used and stored all over, women and men wearing lots of
 cotton clothing, and lots of smoking materials, open fires, sparks from
 steam engines (trains, threshers, boats, etc), campfires of hunters,
 brush burning, smokehouses for curing meats, bondfires for newly cleared
 land, open fires for making soap, scalding fowl and rendering lard,
 lightening, back burning, etc. you can only imagine how dangerous life
 was with all that sawdust around. Even circuses used sawdust all around
 and inside the tents as temporary flooring, and the tents were lit with
 open, burning torches attached to the wood mainpoles. That would give me
 bigger thrills and chills than any caged Tiger.
 
 Hope this answers your question. Thanks for writing. Rita - Oconto
 County WIGenWeb
 
 

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