A Tale from the Days of the Timber-Slayers
They used to call him “the governor” way back when. But most folks today have never heard of Samuel Longabaugh. He wasn’t actually governor, of course. But that’s how important he was in the 1870s and 1880s — when cord wood fueled everything from the Empire mills to steam-belching locomotives. Because Samuel Longabaugh was the guy who brought all that wood downriver to market.
Over his long lifetime, Longabaugh became one of the best-known, and best-liked, men on the Carson River. But history’s funny about who it remembers, and who it doesn’t. So here’s the story of this almost-forgotten pioneer – and the heady days of the “timber slayers.”
Born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1836, Longabaugh came west in his mid-twenties, settling in 1863 in the territory that soon would become Nevada. The 1870 census found him as a 33-year-old carpenter living in Lyon County (probably Dayton). But Longabaugh wasn’t “just” a carpenter. The Comstock Lode was in full swing, and all that ore required crushing. Later reports would say Longabaugh “directed the construction of most of the mills” along the banks of the Carson River.
By his mid-thirties, Longabaugh was established enough to think about settling down. He married Irish-born Agnes Harman (or Hartmann) in Carson City on May 15, 1873. He was 36 at the time; she was about ten years younger and she might have had two or three children from a previous marriage. The couple made their home at Empire, soon adding four or five more children of their own to the family. Poor Agnes – one was an 11-pound baby boy, born at Empire in February, 1876.
Beginning about the same time as his marriage, Longabaugh began driving wood, floating it downriver to the mills. Entire forests in Alpine and at Tahoe were being chopped down to meet the Comstock’s demand. One news report bemoaned woodcutters “raiding through town [Silver Mountain] and slaying every available tree,” including those that had adorned the local cemetery.
From 1873 through the early 1890s, newspapers were filled with notices about Longabaugh and his wood drives. The size of those drives varied, with 6,000 cords of wood mentioned in 1878, and 15,000 to 18,000 cords in 1888. At other times, Longabaugh was hired to supervise combined wood drives. In 1877, for example, it was Longabaugh who cut the boom near Silver King to send 30,000 cords of wood cascading downriver.
The wood was destined for various spots along the way. Of 11,000 cords that began their journey in 1884 at Markleeville, for example, 500 cords were destined for Empire; 1,500 would be taken out at the Brunswick mill; 1,000 would go to the Eureka and Woodworth mills; and the rest to Dayton.
It was a difficult business. There were employees to manage – as many as 40 men on a single drive. And each of those men needed food and supplies for what could be a multi-week process.
The work was also highly dangerous; men sometimes died. Silver Mountain resident Frank Young, about 35 years old, became one of those casualties, drowning in 1873 during a wood drive “just below the falls.” His “terribly mutilated” body was carried to Carson City, where he was given a Masonic burial. Another man was killed on the East Fork of the Carson River in 1878 when a log rolled over on him, crushing his skull.
Longabaugh encountered a casualty of a different sort in the summer of 1879, when a wood drive smashed the timbers of a county bridge; the Douglas commissioners sent Longabaugh and a fellow woodman the bill for repairs. And someone had a big bill to pay in 1874 when a “stampede of cordwood” wrecked 300 tons of “Dutch Fred” Dangberg’s hay, a loss of $2,000 or $3,000.
Then there were tax disputes. . . Not surprisingly, the tax authorities in Alpine and elsewhere proved eager to “receive a portion of the woodchopper’s dollar,” imposing assessments of as much as $3.50 per cord. Luckily, the California Supreme Court eventually nixed such levies.
Mother Nature, too, might conspire against the wood-floating industry by failing to provide sufficient water for a drive. In 1882, for example, woodchoppers Martin and Bryant were forced to halt their drive of 12,000 cords of wood “until the river rises.” Some 3,000 of those cords belonged to Longabaugh. But even waiting brought risks; water-logged wood might become too saturated to float. When a similar “water scarcity” problem arose in 1889, Longabough solved the problem by hiring a team of men to “shove, push and haul” part of his drive through the Mexican ditch, a process that took more than seven weeks from start to finish.
And, believe it or not, there were wood thieves. Unexplained “shrinkage” could consume as much as 13% of a drive – a $50,000 loss. This led some local woodmen to appoint “measurers and guardians of the drive” in 1874 in an effort to stop it.
But when the wood drives went well, they could be very profitable indeed. Extrapolating from those loss figures, a single drive could yield upwards of $300,000. And Longabaugh was said to have “never lost a boom.”
One of the largest wood drives ever held took place in 1890, when Longabaugh, Spooner, and Martin all ‘ran their wood together’ – a massive 35,000 to 40,000 cords, resulting in “one continuous string of wood from Rodenbaugh’s to the Eureka mill.” Some 26 men worked the section between Cradlebaugh bridge and the end of the wood drive. Longabaugh had 20,000 cords of that total.
As early as June each year, a boom would be installed near Rodenbah’s, taking advantage of a natural narrowing in the river there. The “boom” itself was a 100-foot-long, 36-inch-square timber, held in place by giant chains made of Norwegian iron. Each link of the chain was 5 inches long, and 1-1/4 inch thick. This was anchored into the solid rock wall on one side; on the opposite side, ropes and chains attached it to large logs known as “dead men” which were buried beneath rock and boulders.
This boom caused the wood floating downriver to begin to collect. According to a visiting reporter, the jammed wood eventually formed a solid mass from five to ten feet deep and stretching upriver as much as two miles, “with the river flowing under and through it.” The wooden mass was so solidly wedged that even once the boom was removed, “not a stick would float down river” without assistance. Armed with 14-foot pike poles, men standing atop the jam would push the wood out, “a stick at a time,” until eventually “the entire mass seems to assume life and comes crashing and grinding and snapping down” – until another jam forced them to repeat the dangerous process.
The last wood drive down the Carson River took place about 1893 under Longabaugh’s direction. In an interview with a San Francisco reporter three years later, Longabaugh claimed he was forced to discontinue his wood business because the V&T Railway “discriminated against him.” The railroad, he claimed, had demanded $3.25 a cord to ship his wood from Empire to Virginia City, or $3.35 a cord from Carson to Virginia City, but offered other woodmen rebates of $2 a cord. “He hates railroad monopolies,” the reporter frankly noted, “and uses picturesque language in reference to them.”
Longabaugh must have spent a good portion of his time in Alpine overseeing his timber interests. Despite his marriage to Agnes, he formed a relationship with a Washoe woman in Markleeville, who became known to locals as Peggy Longabaugh. They had at least one child together: May, born about 1887. Described as intelligent and industrious, Peggy sometimes socialized with the wives of other wood contractors. Both Peggy and her daughter lived in a teepee behind the old schoolhouse in Markleeville. May would grow up to marry John Anthony, and they would raise their children in the former schoolhouse. Descendants still live in Alpine County today.
Longabaugh had other connections with Alpine County, as well; his daughter, Emily, was hired to teach school at Monitor in the fall of 1885. He also helped Eugenia May [Bruns], a friend from Empire, secure a teaching post at Markleeville about 1898.
Wife Agnes eventually had had enough, filing for divorce in 1896, alleging cruelty and abuse. Whether those charges were real or a legal fiction is difficult to know, but by then Samuel had become fairly wealthy. Agnes was granted a divorce in 1897, receiving an alimony award of $5,000, plus $300 to cover the cost of her attorney. That spring, perhaps to satisfy this financial obligation, Samuel deeded Agnes three parcels of land in the “South Park tract” of Los Angeles, a transaction valued at $2,500.
By the time of the 1900 Census, Longabaugh identified himself simply as a “grocer.” Among his other business endeavors, he ran a general merchandise store on Second Street in Empire (near the Mexican Mill) – a business that lasted over 25 years.
But he hadn’t entirely given up his interest in logging. In September, 1899, Longabough purchased the wood business of William E. Price, and in 1900, built a six-mile flume down the back of Slide Mountain, “from the flat above Price’s lake to Ophir.” By 1903 he was employing 40 men at his wood camp, and planned to flume 5,000 cords down to Ophir. A 1905 newspaper blurb announced he’d secured a contract to supply the V&T with 6,000 cords of wood. But timber resources began to dwindle, and Longabough’s log flume to Ophir lasted only until 1910. Seeing the writing on the wall, the V&T began converting its locomotives to fuel oil in 1907. Longabaugh would be their last wood supplier.
Following the divorce, ex-wife Agnes moved to the Bay area. She died in Vallejo on January 31, 1908 at the age of 61. By the time of the 1910 Census, Samuel Longabaugh had moved from Empire to Franktown. Still nominally operating a wood yard, he lived next door to a dairy farm owned by his son, Seth W. Longabaugh.
By the end of his life, Longabaugh had earned the high esteem of his contemporaries. “There are few men in this State who possess as many friends as Mr. Longabaugh,” the Genoa Weekly Courier wrote in April, 1894. An associate tried to nominate Longabaugh for U.S. Senate in 1898, saying “he has run opposition to railroads and to corporate power ever since he has been in business, and is probably the only man in the State who has held his own against them, and never was bought off.” He was, the friend added, as “honest, able, and as blunt as a hickory club.” By 1907, the Record-Courier proclaimed that “in Western Nevada there is no better-known man than Sam Longabaugh.”
And yet, today, Samuel Longabaugh is virtually unknown. He died in Carson City on December 5, 1919, two weeks after his 83rd birthday. His death certificate assigned his demise to old age, plus kidney and prostate troubles. Fellow Masons gave him a dignified burial in the Masonic section of Lone Mountain Cemetery. Sadly, this once well-loved pioneer’s grave is currently unmarked.
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Special thanks to Stephen Drew for information about Samuel Longabaugh’s connection with the V&T.