Blackwater Ben by William Durbin
May 22, 2007 — Mary Childs
It’s the winter of 1898 and Ben Ward, 13 years old, is just happy to be taken out of school to work with his dad, the cook in the Blackwater Logging Camp. His days are made up of prepping, serving and cleaning up from feeding all of the loggers in the camp.
The loggers are a colorful group of people, many with secrets in their past. One of them, Charlie the “dentist” who sharpens all of the saws, helps Ben figure out some of his own family secrets. The work is dangerous, living conditions are not the best, and it’s a job that must be done in the cold of winter when the ground is frozen. They needed to get all the logs cut and moved to a spot near a river for transport to the sawmill.
Stories like this are an important part of the history of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and up into Canada. Logging was a major industry of our area and provided building materials for a growing country. In my family a few of my older uncles worked in logging camps, including my Uncle Fred who was the camp cook. The picture below was from a picture sent to him from someone in another camp. It shows what conditions were like for people like the logging crew in this book.
