Lumberjack

For other uses, see Lumberjack (disambiguation).
"Wood cutter" redirects here. For other uses, see Woodcutter (disambiguation).
A lumberjack c. 1900

Lumberjack is a mostly North American term for workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees. The term usually refers to loggers in the era before 1945 in the United States, when trees were felled using hand tools and dragged by oxen to rivers.

The work was difficult, dangerous, intermittent, low-paying, and involved living in primitive conditions. However, the men built a traditional culture that celebrated strength, masculinity, confrontation with danger, and resistance to modernization.[1]

  1. ^ Hayner, Norman S. (April 1945). "Taming the Lumberjack". American Sociological Review. 10 (2): 217–225. doi:10.2307/2085640. JSTOR 2085640.