If you were standing on the riverbank in Fargo in the summer of 1882, you could watch thousands of pine logs from Minnesota forests floating north on the Red River toward sawmills in Winnipeg.
Winnipeg was growing rapidly and needed lumber for construction. In fact, the city used “all the lumber they could get.” One of its largest suppliers was the Clarke & McClure Lumber Company of Perham, Minnesota.
For years, Clarke & McClure cut lumber in Perham, shipped it by rail to Fargo, then floated it downstream to Winnipeg on large rafts. But when the company’s sawmill burned down in 1881, it still owned 30 million board feet of white pine and had no mill to process it.
Rather than ship logs by rail to Canada, the company chose a cheaper solution: send the logs by river.
After lumberjacks cut the trees during the winter of 1881–82, oxen hauled the logs to the Otter Tail River. When spring arrived, about 350 river drivers guided the logs downstream through Fergus Falls, then west to Wahpeton-Breckenridge and into the Red River.
Once on the Red, high water made the work easier, and only about 150 men were needed to keep the drive moving. At Fargo-Moorhead, “thousands of huge logs” drifted northward. Steamboat traffic on the Red River was shut down for two weeks to avoid dangerous collisions with the logs.
The massive log booms continued past Grand Forks and Pembina before finally reaching Winnipeg. The journey covered roughly 700 river miles and took 100 days, from mid-May through late August of 1882.
When the logs arrived, the Red River at Winnipeg became “one dense mass of logs” stretching nearly five miles. Winnipeg’s sawmills spent the entire winter turning them into lumber.
On this date in 1882, a newspaper reported that eight million board feet of pine logs from the Winnipeg log drive were passing through Fergus Falls and nearly wiped out a local dam.
The Winnipeg log drive continued for two more summers, until Clarke & McClure harvested all of its white-pine lands near Perham.
Dakota Datebook written by Steve Hoffbeck, retired MSUM historian
Sources:
- “The Log Drive,” Fergus Falls Weekly Journal, June 19, 1882, p. 2, in Vicky Anderson, “History Tidbits,” Otter Tail County Historical Society Newsletter, Vol. 34, No. 3, July-August 2008, p. 7; reprinted as “The Log Drive,” Moorhead Daily News, June 24, 1882, p. 2.
- “85 Years Since Last Log Drive On River,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, July 25, 1968, p. 20.
- E. H. Pelton, “Visits Scenes Of Log Drives 52 Years Ago,” St. Cloud Times, August 25, 1936, p. 4.
- “Red River Lumberjack of Early ‘80s Visits Here,” Moorhead Daily News, September 30, 1933, p. 3.
- “River a Key to Development,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, June 19, 1972, p. 22.
- “Pembina Pioneer,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 15, 1882, p. 8.
- “All Day Yesterday,” Fargo Daily Argus, July 4, 1882, p. 5.
- “The Ottertail Drive,” Fargo Daily Argus, July 4, 1882, p. 2.
- “Export Pine,” Grand Forks Herald, August 17, 1882, p. 1.
- “The Bulk of Clarke & McClure’s Log Drive,” Fargo Daily Argus, July 9, 1883, p. 8.
- “The Third Drive of Logs This Year,” Pembina Pioneer Express, August 8, 1884, p. 3.
- E.H. Pelton, “Fur Traders, Logging Crews Find Quarters Near Perham,” St. Cloud Times, April 26, 1930, p. 3.
- “Alsop Line,” Fargo Daily Argus, December 31, 1882, p. 34.
- “The Lumber Industry In Manitoba,” gov.mb.ca.lumber_industry_in_manitoba, p. 5, 19, accessed May 22, 2026.
