The Pulp Drive
The summer after I graduated from high school I worked for Scott Paper Company on the pulp drive on and around Moosehead Lake in Maine. Moosehead's East Outlet is the head of the Kennebec River which is where all the pulpwood in this video wound up. The paper mills were in Waterville and Winslow, across the river, upstream from Augusta aways.
This whole process ended several years after my summer experience. Most of what this video shows happened in the spring but it took the entire summer to finish "picking" and sluicing the pulp.
Pulp wood in the Scott drive was four feet long spruce and fir, nothing else. Booms of pulp were towed across Moosehead Lake to the East Outlet by the Katahdin, a ship which now has its home in Greenville. I once spent an entire day "picking pulp" in Spencer Bay and then the entire night on the "Kate" towing the boom about 12 miles across to the East Outlet.
The tools of my trade that summer were the pick pole and the pickeroon, both manufactured and sold by the Peavey Manufacturing Company located on "the Airline" - Route 9 - in Eddington, Maine.
Anyway, here's what was involved: