Logging was never gentle work. In the early 1900s, a lumberjack’s day could mean felling massive trees, trimming branches with sharp axes, hauling timber over rough ground, and working in wet, cold, unstable conditions where one wrong step could turn deadly.
The work demanded strength, speed, and constant awareness. Men were crushed by falling trees, struck by swinging limbs, injured by saws, or swept away in rivers while moving timber downstream.
One of the most dangerous situations in river logging was the log jam.
A log jam happened when floating timber piled up and became stuck in a river, often against rocks, brush, bends in the waterway, or other logs. What looked like a tangled heap of wood could actually be a deadly trap under enormous pressure. Each log pushed against the next, with the river forcing more weight into the mass. To break the jam loose, loggers sometimes had to climb out onto the shifting pile and pry, cut, or blast the logs apart.
The danger was obvious. A single movement could release the whole jam at once. Logs could roll, snap, surge forward, or pull a man beneath them before anyone could react. A lumberjack caught in such a rush might be struck, pinned, drowned, or carried away with the timber.
That is what the men at the Humtulups logging camp believed had happened to Harry Mitzoris in 1919. After he was struck on the head and knocked unconscious during a log jam, witnesses saw his body float away on a piece of timber and lodge in the brush. The conclusion seemed grim enough that an undertaker was called to the river.
But this strange little newspaper item had a far less mournful ending. When the undertaker arrived to collect the supposed dead man, the “corpse” sat up and grinned.
Corpse Sat Up and Grinned
ABERDEEN, Wash. — “And when the undertaker drove up to the river the ‘corpse’ just naturally sat up and grinned at him.”
That’s the way they tell it at the Humtulups logging camp, 35 miles north of here, where Harry Mitzoris, lumberjack, was “alleged” to have been killed in a log jam. Struck on the head as he fell and rendered unconscious, other loggers saw the body float off on a piece of timber and lodge in some brush, but Mitzoris is back on the job.
Source: The Daily Star Mirror. Moscow, Idaho. May 3, 1919.
