Sawmill Museum Blog: Roots of Logrolling & Lumberjack Festival

"A lumberjack will hold the log until you and your partner are on top of it. When the two of you are ready, the lumberjack simply lets go of the log. Now the game is on to see who can stay up the longest. After you fall in, hop back in line and do it again!" This exists only at our Third Annual Lumberjack Camp, held on July 13, on the grounds of The Sawmill Museum.

The Festival is our big event held the second Saturday of July annually that features 30-40 lumberjacks competing in multiple different events. We hope the log rolling demos and chances for fans attempting to stay on top of the log will be "a big occasion, and in the way of good cheer and a spontaneous flow of friendship and neighborly love (History of Jackson County, Georgia)."

With the lumber industry of the late 1800s focused on the Northwoods, the men and women living in the woods of Georgia would meet every year to "logroll" and have a big party. Oddly this logrolling was actually log-piling for a big bonfire. The people just called it logrolling and there were various branded "logrolls." The whole community would come out, have crafts (like we will have on July 13), a big dance at night (the Jaycee's will have a Street Festival), and a community building event.

Our notion of logrolling starts in the late 1800s, but with the word birler. The roots of logrolling come from a change of transportation in the mid-1800s. Replacing and/or challenging log rafts, log drives transported more logs at a quicker rate down the river. The art of log drive required a lumberjack to jump from one log to another as the logs made its way down the river to a log boom near a sawmill. As the logs bobbed and bounced in the fast current, men had to keep their balance. Logrolling was born out of survival.

Log drivers, or river pigs, would celebrate the end of a drive by seeing who was the best birler in the mid-1800s perhaps. These birlers were "from" Wisconsin and Minnesota. By the 1880s, these lumberjacks started doing public shows. Some were organized shows sponsored by lumber companies, but often, the log drives would "perform" for onlookers who congregated around the river to watch the log drives.

Eventually, these public shows and fun times became organized. In 1898, Tom Fleming of Eau Claire, WI, became the first logrolling champion when he won the first world championship. The competition was held on September 9 at the Trans-Mississippi Expo. While the CivilWarMuseum.org credits September 10 as Lumbermens Day, the "History of the T-M Expo", credits September 9, as the day the Nebraska Lumbermen's Association provided a day of entertainment that revolved around logrolling. The contest, held at the Lagoon, awarded the winner $250. Later, the Woodmen of the World exhibited their skill set at the Expo.