The Logging Life: Gone Down the River

Some of the most appealing photoshoots for the original run of LIFE magazine are the ones that captured a way of life that has receded from the modern world. Perhaps there is no better example than LIFE’s story on the vanishing cowboy, which would become an inspiration for the Marlboro Man character. That figure resonated in part because he represented something that was being lost—a world in which people spent their workdays in the saddle, rather than at the desk.

In 1940 LIFE staff photographer Hansel Mieth ventured to Idaho for a story in a similar vein. Here the central figures were the loggers. Mieth captured these men gathering timber from the forests and shepherding those fallen trees down the river to a lumber mill. A log drive bears more than a passing resemblance to a cattle drive. While the trees are not alive in the same way that cattle are, their size, along with the rushing waters, created an element of adventure—certainly more than one might find in, say, an office cubicle.

The pictures Mieth took at a logging camp deepen the shoot’s cowboy feel. When not working some of the loggers gathered to sing songs, and the camp cook signaled chow time by ringing a triangular dinner bell.

Mieth’s logging photos never made it into the magazine, and without an accompanying story, we don’t know much about the location off the shoot, beyond that it was in Idaho. We also don’t know much about the loggers themselves, except for what Mieth captured visually. Nor do we know the specific theme of the intended story, which is thus left to our imaginations.

In 2023 nearly 50,000 people worked in the logging industry in the United States, so the business continues. But the practice of driving logs down the river ceased in the 1970s. If it happens at all these days, it’s part of one-day celebration honoring a bygone practice.