Chapter 7: Bill Byers the Logger and the Great Minnesota Timber Rush

Logging camp scene.

Northern Minnesota was the right place, at the right time, for a logging boom. Accessible timber was very valuable after the Civil War. The treeless prairies were being settled by farmers and they weren’t happy with sod buildings for long. They wanted boards for building houses, barns, fences, chicken coops and other farm buildings, and nearby Minnesota was full of trees.
According to frontier logic, the forests were inexhaustible. So, from about 1870 well into the 1930s, the great timber rush lasted. It marked one of the bigger land grabs -and wastes – in American history.
I got the chance to interview Bill Byers, one of the last loggers alive from that logging era prior to World War II. Here is his story.