Milt Haley, by all accounts, made his living as a timber man. He was probably lured “over the mountain” from the Tug River section by the timber industry that evolved in the Guyandotte Valley following the Civil War. It certainly played a role in his death. Really, for all practical purposes, logging was imbedded in the life fabric of every person living around Harts Creek in 1889…including little Ed Haley, who grew up in the era when timbering and steamboats gave way to coal and the railroad.

“Almost from the very beginning of history in this region, logs have been rafted on the Guyandotte and floated to Cincinnati and even to more distant markets,” according to Fred B. Lambert’s The Llorrac (1926). “In autumn, men with saws and axes went into the woods and cut down the trees. At first, the trees were so plentiful that they could be cut and rolled directly into the stream. In some cases, the bark was peeled from the logs and they were allowed to slide down the mountain side. But gradually the timber along the shore became scarce, and timbermen were compelled to go farther and farther into the hills or up the creeks, until now most of the virgin timber has been cut, and they are beginning on the second growth and, in some places, even on the third.”

The logging season began with the construction of logging camps “during the late winter and early spring months before the spring rains began to swell the creeks and rivers,” according to River Cities Monthly.

The men who came into these camps for work “were men in every sense of the word, and their beards of many days growth betrayed the fact that razors as well as some one to use them were quite scarce…,” Lambert wrote. They worked silently but would “yell like wild men” if something “unusual” happened. They were “master hands at swearing” and often fought amongst themselves, be it for sport or in fits of rage. Because of their wild nature, a foreman was often hired to regulate their activity. At night, they slept on bundles in crude log cabins. If the camp was large enough, a mess hall was constructed and a cook was hired to serve them bacon, beans, bread, coffee “or whatever may be brought into the camp from the surrounding country.”

According to Carol Caraco’s The Big Sandy (1979), loggers marked their timber by branding it with their initials. After branding their logs, they got them out of the hollow and to the river, usually by use of horse or oxen and cant hooks. Another often-used method involved splash dams. “When thousands of logs accumulated behind the timber and stone splash dam, a key wedge would be removed and the timber spewed forth,” Caraco wrote. As the logs made their way down the creek, many were jammed or land-locked along the bank.

At the mouth of creeks and rivers were “taker-ups” and booms. “The taker-ups were free-lance agents who caught and held unrafted logs until the owners appeared,” according to Caraco. “When their charge for this service proved excessive, the legislature standardized fees. Other times loose logs were stopped by a boom, a dam of huge poplar logs reinforced by a giant chain stretched across the stream.”

This boom concept, as well as questions about branding, were apparently at the heart of the 1889 troubles.

According to The Llorrac, “After the logs were all in the river, they were arranged into a raft and held in position by hickory pins driven through the small tiepoles. Later they were made more secure by the use of iron ‘chain dogs.’ Three men were required to build a raft; one to sight or place the logs, one to carry poles, and one to drive pins or chaindogs. They received a dollar a day each and it took about a day. The rafting was done in the fall and winter so as to be ready to go out on the first ‘log-tide’ of spring or early summer. An experienced raftsman always knew when it was safe to go. And well he did, for below him were the treacherous falls and shoals and eddies ready, without a moment’s notice, to hurl him to a terrible death. When the day came for the trip and the oarsmen decided that the river was at safe ‘log tide,’ the great ropes were loosened, the men took their places, the raft slowly moved into the current, and the wild ride was on.”

Based on Lambert’s notes, rafts moved at speeds of eight or nine miles per hour in convoys of fifty or more.

“There was an oarsmen at the bow’ and another behind, directing, with their strokes, every movement of the raft,” he wrote. “No one who has ever been near the river when rafts were passing, can fail to have heard the strange calls of the raftsmen to each other as they rounded the bends of the river or passed through dangerous chutes or rapids.”

“The man on the bow didn’t have to know much,” according to Lucian Mitchell, an old rafter who spoke with Lambert. “The man at the stern knew where to go, where the shoals were, and how to work up to the point on a hard bend and knew the Jordan sands at the mouth of Bear Creek. Sometimes a raft would cork the river by bowing and swing around in such a position as to get both ends afoul. If another raft came down it was rulable to hit this raft in the middle and cut it in two pieces.”

“This was a thrilling time,” The Llorrac claimed. “The front oar was often broken, leaving the raft unmanageable and, in the language of the raftsmen, it sometimes ‘swarped’ or turned completely around and even went to pieces. Let no one minimize the danger. If by accident, a man lost his balance and fell into the water, he was generally carried at once by the eddies to the bottom of the river; or, he drifted under the raft and was seen no more until his body was found, drifting far below, after many days or even months. In case they escaped these dangers they were still subject to sunken logs or great stones.”

Lucian Mitchell of Logan County downplayed the drowning aspect, saying, “Not many drowned. Most could swim.”