History Mystery #85: Raymond Lumber Flume

By Don Grove

We have had several folks visiting the Raymond Museum lately that have been interested in the lumber flumes in our area. This photograph is labeled “Lumber Flume on Madera Road to Yosemite.”

We would love to know exactly where this flume crossed the road and exactly which road it is — and if anyone still has pieces from it. Many homes in the Raymond area had timbers or planks from the flumes used in their construction or additions.

It would also be fun to know what year that car is to get a rough idea of when the photo may have been taken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOLLOW-UP ON HISTORY MYSTERY #84

We thank those who made comments on SierraNewsOnline’s Facebook page. Unfortunately, the only references were to the teepee burner at the Goodwin sawmill on Road 228, which is still standing near Goodwin’s Lumber Company. Our questions were about the larger North Fork mill on Road 225.

We also had two comments sent directly to The North Fork History Group. The following are edited versions, the full comments can be found on SierraNewsOnline.com under comments for History Mystery #84.

From Dean Lamborn
The sawmill also used, until 1980, a teepee (conical) burner for the disposal of unmarketable wood waste. This permitted teepee burner could have been used anytime thereafter by the sawmill (AR 39; 198; 279; 280). North Fork abandoned this conical burner and its permitted use in exchange for the permitting of the co-generation plant.

From Shelley Sturm Lyttle
Wow, hard to believe it has been nearly 50 years since I used to sit in the science room, mornings, at the North Fork School watching smoke from the mill incinerator, drift downstream. Those were school years of 1969-1972. I graduated from the North Fork School in 1972, so, I believe the incinerator operated, at least into 1972.

When I was in college, or, would be home from college in the summertime, circa the late 1970s, I can recall following ‘chip trucks’, as they rolled from the North Fork mill, toward an unknown destination somewhere on the valley floor. The chip tricks hauled-off wood waste, that used to be burned.
I cannot remember that anyone ever called it a tipi-burner. I think we always called it the incinerator. We thought it was shaped more like a badminton shuttlecock, than a tipi.