Tie Hack Interpretive Display
About 17 miles northwest of Dubois on U.S. Highway 26/287

Lower Level
Plaque #1:
Rough, tough, sinewy men, mostly of Scandinavian origin, whose physical strength was nearly a religion. The millions of cross ties they hacked out of the pine forests kept the railroad running through the West.

The tie hack was a professional, hewing ties to the exact 7 inches on a side demanded by the tie inspector. For years he was paid 10 cents a tie up to $3.00 for his dawn to dusk day. Board and room cost about 1.50 a day.

Mostly bachelors, they lived in scattered cabins or tie camps and ate hearty meals at a common boarding house. Entertainment was simple and spontaneous. A few notes on a “squeeze box’ ‘ might start an evening of dancing, with hob nailed boots scarring the rough wooden floors. The spring tie drive down the Wind River usually ended with one big party in town with enough boozing and brawling to last them another year back in the woods.

These hard-working, hard-drinking, hard-fighting men created an image that remains today only in tie hack legend. By the end of World War II, modern tools and methods brought an end to an era that produced the proud breed of mighty men—the tie hack.

Plaque #2
The Cross-Tie

Here are the tools of his trade:

• Double-Bit Ax—with two sharp edges

• Broad Ax—an 8 pounder with a broad 12-inch long blade, looks like an executioner’s ax!

• Peeler—a slightly curved dull blade to slip easily under the bark

• Crosscut Saw—designed to cut across the grain of the wood
  Peavey—a stout spiked lever used to roll logs

• Cant Hook—a toothed lever used to drag or turn logs

• Pickaroon—a pike pole with a sharp steel point on one side and a curved hook on the other—used to guide floating logs.

They also carried a sharpening file and a jug of kerosene to clean pitch off their equipment.

Plaque #3
Cross-ties were in demand by the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad as it spanned Wyoming. The Wyoming Tie and Timber Company was formed in 1916 in Riverton to supply the ties—it took 2,500 ties for a mile of track.

The main center of tie production was the lodgepole pine forest that surrounds you. Three to five ties, eight feet in length, were hewn from the clear, limb-free trunks.

Wyoming was undeveloped country with few roads. Water was the most economical method of moving the ties from forest to the railhead at Riverton.

Middle Level
Section #1
Flumes

A cut, shaped and peeled tie weighs 120 pounds. Each tie hack was responsible for shouldering his own ties and carrying them to a decking area located by one of the narrow roads through the forest.

The hacks marked one end of the tie with his own symbol—a letter or number, and was paid by the number of ties marked with his symbol.

When winter snows arrived, horse drawn bobsleds moved the ties to a banking area next to a dammed up pond. A bobsled loaded with 120 ties weighed 7 tons and was pulled by two horses.

When the spring thaws came, tie hacks dumped their ties into the ponds on smaller creeks and fed them into flumes for the journey to the Wind River.

Flumes are great V-shaped wooden troughs built to float ties down to the main river—bypassing the rock-choked mountain streams.

Dams were built on the streams to impound enough water to carry the ties down the flumes. When the spring floods came in May or June, tie hacks fed the ties into the flumes for their downward journey.

A section of the Canyon Creek flume was constructed with a 41 degree grade, and one year they tried to slide the ties down it without water. This dry fluming attempt failed when the friction of the ties shooting down the trough set fire to the flume.

This portion of the Warm Springs Flume was trestled and guyed with steel cables to sheer rock walls. Ties traveling this flume emptied into the Warm Springs Dam. Notice the catwalk used by drivers to prod the ties on their way down the flume.

Part of the famous Warm Springs flume follows the creek underground through a water curved arch. The flume is suspended inside the arch by steel cables anchored in the roof. The last tie to float this flume was in 1942.

The smaller flume on the left brought the ties from the forest, the flume on the right transported ties to the Wind River.

Section #2
Booms

Barricades across the stream held the ties together in what is called a log boom. When the danger of spring floods had passed, the trap was sprung and the tie drive was on.

Section #3
The Tie Drive

It took an experienced Woods Boss to choose exactly the right time to start the drive. Too early, and the spring floods scattered the ties on the banks. Too late, and there wasn’t enough water.

Martin Olson usually picked mid-July to put his half a hundred men on the river with peaveys and pike poles to steer a half million ties 100 miles down stream to Riverton.

A tie-drive looked like a river full of giant shoestring potatoes tumbling and rolling along with ant-like men running over the sea of ties, loosening a tie here or unjamming a pile-up there.

The drivers, half in and half out of the water, punched holes in their hobnailed boots to let the water out as fast as it ran in.

A drive lasted about 30 days, with the largest one having 700,000 ties. In the 31 year history of the Wind River drives, over 10 million ties floated to Riverton. The final drive in 1946 contained only machine sawn ties. The colorful tie hack and his river drives were history

Massive jams occasionally filled the river from bank to bank with tangled piles of ties. A good tie driver could find the ‘key” tie to “spring” the jam.

Section #4
The Tie Hack Boss

The peak year was 1927 when 700,000 ties were driven down the Wind River to Riverton. The Wyoming T and T Company harvested 10 million railroad cross-ties under Olson’s supervision and in cooperation with the Forest Service’s timber management plan.

After supervising tie hacks and tie drives for 31 years, Martin Olson retired in 1947, when the Wyoming Tie and Timber Company was sold to the J. N. (Bud) Fisher Tie and Timber Company. The change of ownership brought new ideas and methods to the timber industry, marking the end of the tie-hack era.