It is not every day Sierra Forest Products sees logs like it saw last week — logs that had been preserved under water for the past 100 years.
Cut up were two truck loads of sinker logs, logs that sink to the bottom of timber ponds, that have sat at the bottom of Shaver Lake since the late 1890s. The logs, not only in excellent condition but extra valued because of their age, grain and color, will be used at the Central Sierra Historical Society Museum in Shaver and for things like picture frames, paneling and furniture.
Jeff Young, a logger in the Sierra, has made recovering the logs at the bottom of the Sierra lake a hobby. His uncle, his father and now him have pulled logs out of the lake for decades, logs that sunk there when the spot was a timber pond and a lumber mill. The old mill still stands and was exposed last year when Shaver Lake was drained for repairs to the cement dam.
Shaver Lake, at 5,500 feet elevation and about an hour’s drive from Fresno, was formed when the dam was built by Southern California Edison in 1927. However, prior to that, the spot was a logging site and the original dam was built in the 1890s to form a log pond. The lumber mill included two railroad tracks where steam-powered engines would bring logs to the site from as far away as 12 miles into the woods.
From The Recorder Online: http://www.recorderonline.com/news/products-52952-history-saw.html