By Ken Brafman, Image from Ken Brafman Collection

TITLE: NEW LUMBERING EXHIBIT AT THE MUSEUM: During the 1860s to the 1880s the population of San Bernardino Valley was increasing rapidly, creating an ever-increasing need for lumber to be used to construct homes, stores, churches, and civic buildings. The most abundant local source of timber was in the western half of the San Bernardino Mountains, where the broad, undulating crest was blanketed with tall stands of sugar pine, yellow pine and incense cedar. In a strenuous effort to whet the endless appetite of the lumber users, in a relatively short time, the increased timber harvest stripped the forest cover of vast sections of the mountain terrain. John E. Brookings visited California after searching the nation for a place to continue his lumbering interests. After investigating the Highland Box and Lumber Company, he received financial backing from his cousin, Robert S. Brookings of the eponymous Brookings Institute. In 1899 John E. Brookings became president of the newly formed Brookings Lumber and Box Company. Brookings Lumber had three Shay locomotives and twenty flat cars that helped carry the logs from the cutting sites all the way to the mill, running along what is now the Rim of the World Highway. The operation relied on teams of two lumberjacks, who used man-operated saws for eleven hours a day. This week’s image shows an assortment of saws on display at the new lumbering exhibit at our Mountain History Museum. Fire risks in the region already threatened the timber industry, and these risks were escalated due to the early steam locomotives which did not use spark arresters. Fire destroyed stored lumber in 1900, 1903 and 1906. When the timber stands that were leased began to run dry the company began looking elsewhere across the western coast. By 1913, the workers began to leave. The sole remaining Shay engine was dismantled, the railroad tracks were pulled up, and the equipment was shipped to a new forest frontier in Oregon.