Virginia Sawmills of the 1900s

Timber rafting is a process of lumber transportation that involves tying lumber together and floating down a water source to their intended location.  Its alternative, log driving, involves floating separate logs down a water source to the intended location.  This often meant chopping down trees, floating the logs down to the sawmill, and picking them up there to process them at the mill.  Both methods have been historically used to transport lumber at little or no cost to the manufacturer.  Log driving is considered more “dangerous” because the logs are not tied together and therefore are less controllable, and are more easily lost (Secondary Source 5).  Because timber rafting and log driving require no fuel, they are incredibly cheap methods of transportation.

A group of Finnish timber rafters in the 1930s (Primary source 2)