Yesterday’s post when Fletcher Walker criticized Fruit Growers increasing logging camp board, here is another side of the story.

The cookhouse in logging camps operated at significant losses.In 1948, when logging camps of Fruit Growers Harvey line opened, raised the price of a meal to one dollar. Complaints were loud and long. But now, instead of losing thirty-six cents per meal, they only lost eight cents. That’s still substantial. At the end 1948 Fruit Growers’s losses for operating those cookouses was $63,500.

On May 2, 1949, Camps Harvey and Stanford opened for another season. In an effort to further reduce expenses, Fruit Growers leased the cookhouses and commisarries to the H.S. Anderson Company for one dollar. Fruit Growers thought perhaps an outside company could handle the meals more efficiently. They would never find the answer.

Just threes into the logging season all operations on the Harvey line  shut down. The cookhouse crews, represented by Local 768 of the Bartenders and Culinary Workers Union, walked off the job in a wage and hour dispute with H.S. Anderson Company. Logging came to a standstill. As the weeks passed with no end of the strike, Fruit Growers abandoned all logging operations on the Harvey line.

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Fruit Growers Supply Company’s Camp 10, located in Pine Creek Valley, west of Eagle Lake was a lively outpost from spring through fall, where over 200 people called it home. For a time it could even boast its own voting precinct. Yet, when the logging season ended, Camp 10 was de-populated, except for one lone soul. A caretaker was hired to keep an eye on everything. In the winter of 1951-52, George Moore was Camp 10 sole resident. The position would soon be eliminated as at the end of the 1952 logging season Camp 10 closed for good.

Tim

In the fall of 1952 when the logging season ended for the Fruit Growers Supply Company’s Susanville operation something peculiar happened. Normally, the locomotives used in its logging operations would be stored for the winter at is Susanville plant to undergo routine service. Not this time, and they were stored at Camp  10. With timber supplies widely scattered, truck logging was more economical, thus it was the end of line for its railroad logging.

In June 1953 Fruit Growers sold its locomotives, three McGiffert loaders and forty-eights miles of railroad iron to United Engineering of San Francisco, best known to naval shipbuilding yard in Alameda during World War II. Fruit Growers did not reveal a price. but the rail removal was a slow process and not completed until October 1954.

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When I transcribed this newspaper article in the early 1980s. there was one item just went over my head. More on that at the end of the post.

Lassen Advocate – June3, 1921 – Large cougar prowling in neighborhood of Camp A. A large cougar has been seen several times recently in the neighborhood of Camp A of the Frut Growers Supply Company. The animal has been trying to get at the pigs at the camp and killed several deer. Ray Ashton went out Tuesday with a view of taking shot of the cougar but the heavy rain spoiled his chances and he returned without seeing the big cat.”

Logging camp food was legendary. Subpar food could break logging camp operations. Yet, Fruit Growers were raising pigs at a logging camp to feed their workers was news to me. After all there were refrigerated rail cars to transport perishable food items.

Tim