Madera Sugar Pine Company

The original Madera log flume.

In February 1874, the California Lumber Company was established with the goal of transporting lumber from the Sierra Nevada to the recently completed railroad in the San Joaquin Valley.[9] The ambitious endeavor required the construction of lumber camps and mills, as well as a log flume to transport the lumber down from high elevations in the Sierra.[10]^: 11

A 54-mile (87 km) log flume - the longest of its kind - was built to transport rough cut lumber from the mountains to the valley floor in Madera, where it could be finished and sold to the global market through the Southern Pacific Railroad. The route was surveyed in 1873 and construction began in 1874. The project required many high trestles to span the mountains and rolling foothills. The flume was ready for the 1877 season, with an estimated construction cost of $250,000.[1]^: 16

Rough sawn lumber clamped into bundles and lashed together in a flume train.

However, the California Lumber Company faced challenges with the creeping of lumber over the sides of the flume, resulting in both a loss for the operation and potential damage to the flume itself. William Thurman, one of the founders of the company, created a novel technique of clamping bundles of lumber together to prevent them from going over the edge during transport.[2] His flume clamp was patented in 1877.[11]

Despite these innovations, the company was underfinanced and was forced to cease operations after only three seasons, due to the drought of 1877.[11][12]

A Dolbeer single-spool donkey rig and logging crew near Nelder Grove in sometime after 1881.

In 1878, the California Lumber Company underwent a major overhaul and was rebranded as the Madera Flume and Trading Company.[13] The new firm expanded logging operations by constructing a four-mile narrow gauge railway that connected the Soquel Mill to a flume, allowing for the transportation of more timber from further outlying areas.[1]^: 20

In the late 1880s, the Madera Flume and Lumber Company made history by being the first to replace oxen teams with steam donkeys in a commercial logging operation.[2] The steam donkey, a small steam engine, allowed loggers to cut and transport more trees and work in any weather condition, thus increasing seasonal lumber production.[10]^{: 103, 127}

A gravity tramway carries lumber to the Soquel log flume.

In 1881, the Soquel Mill was built and connected to a lengthened log flume upstream from the original California Mill. In 1882, a second California Mill was established near Nelder Grove. However, this mill lacked a nearby water source, so lumber was transported by a forest tramway to connect to the flume. By this time, the company was able to transport 100,000 board feet of finished lumber to Madera daily.[1]^: 20–23

In 1889, the company introduced Betsy, an early Shay locomotive. She was the first of her kind to operate in the southern Sierra Nevada and represented a significant advancement in logging techniques and efficiency.[2] The Visalia Weekly Delta reported on the innovation.[1]^: 26

Logging on the Madera Flume and Trading Company has been greatly facilitated this season by a new narrow-gauge (3-foot) railroad. Cars especially made for this purpose have done away with many [ox] teams in bringing lumber from the camps to the mill. Expenses at Madera and in the woods now exceed $15,000 per month – truly an enterprise of which any area might feel justly proud.

Betsy had a unique design, with a small cab that required the engineer to also serve as the fireman. Despite this quirk, Betsy became one of the longest-serving Shay locomotives in the Sierra and remained in service through the 1930s..[1]^{: 26, 44–45}

Before steam power, oxen teams were the only way to get felled logs to the mill.

Betsy, the first locomotive in the southern Sierra, began operating in 1881.

A giant Seqouia stump in Nelder Grove around 1881.

In the late 1800s, loggers in Nelder Grove cut down many giant sequoias. However, the wood from these trees had limited commercial potential due to its tendency to break apart when felled and its inferior suitability for construction compared to old-growth sugar pine and ponderosa. Despite this, more than 100 of the largest sequoias in the grove survived clearcutting by 1897.[14]

By the late 1890s, the Madera Flume and Trading Company began to decline as access to available timber tracts dwindled and demand for lumber exports weakened during a long economic depression.[15] The California Lumber Company mills were permanently shut down and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1878.[16] Only the Madera lumber yard continued to operate on a limited basis, sustained by contract loggers feeding cut logs to the flume.[1]^: 27

A new earth dam on the Lewis Fork of the Fresno River served two purposes. It formed a log pond to serve the new Sugar Pine mill and created a water source for a new flume head. The completely rebuilt flume followed the original fifty-four miles (87 km) route through Fresno Flats, dropping a total of 4,500 feet (1,400 m) elevation on the journey to Madera. To maintain the proper grade, over 200 trestles were built, some of them 65 feet (20 m) high.[4]^: 45–46 The flume cost $275,000 to construct, an average of $5000 per mile. It used approximately 5,700,000 feet of redwood lumber and 2100 kegs of nails.[19]

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  The log pond at Sugar Pine Mill.
• 
  Flume trestle at the China Store grade.
• 
  Residents of Madera celebrate the completion of the "world's longest lumber flume" on October 27, 1900.

A catastrophic fire swept through the town on September 9, 1922.[20] The sawmill, lumber yard, and 75 acres (0.30 km²) acres of surrounding forest were destroyed.[1]^: 71–74

Madera Sugar Pine immediately announced plans to rebuild and expand. Equipment was ordered, manufactured and shipped from the eastern US by rail, including a modern two-band sawmill. Crews worked throughout the winter to transport and assemble over 500,000 pounds (230,000 kg) of equipment, hauling it over 60 miles (97 km) miles of dirt road from Madera to the mill site.[21][1]^: 72 Operations resumed the following April with an expanded capacity of 350,000 board feet a day.[22]

• 
  The flume complex at the second Sugar Pine Mill.
• 
  The expanded flume loading yards.

Chinese workers, many of whom had arrived during the California Gold Rush, played a significant role in completing the Madera Flume and filling many of the jobs in the Sugar Pine lumber yards.[23][1]^: 14 However, these Chinese workers faced significant discrimination and segregation in the workplace and in their daily lives. They were relegated to low-paying jobs as common laborers, were hired and paid through a middleman, and lived in a separate Chinatown apart from the rest of the community.[1]^: 71, 82 Anti-Chinese sentiment and lack of legal protection also hindered the Chinese workers' experience, particularly in the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act.[1]^: 81

In 1922, Madera Sugar Pine decided to replace these Chinese laborers with Mexican laborers who had become readily available following the Immigration Act of 1917. In a move that would send a clear signal that Chinese workers were no longer welcome, the company set fire to Chinatown at the end of the logging season, waiting until the first snowfall to ensure that no other structures would be damaged in the blaze. This incident highlights the discrimination and injustice faced by Chinese workers in the logging industry during the early 20th century.[24]

Prostitution flourished in the Sierra during the logging days. The San Francisco fire of 1906 left many sex workers without work, so they went to the logging camps. Law enforcement left them be, and they traded at the company store and received medical care at the company hospital. They accepted all customers, showing no discrimination beyond the ability to pay.[1]^: 76–79

The first brothel for the loggers of Madera Sugar Pine Company was called Kamook, located four miles from Sugar Pine. Tipperary was the most popular. Named after the popular song, Tipperary featured a main parlor house and four individual cabins. Accommodations at Kamook were scarce, so the sex workers set up a tent community called "Happy Camp" two miles away in Fish Camp, California. Business boomed, and the sex workers soon hired carpenters to construct a permanent brothel.

Prostitution houses stood for just over twenty years, Tipperary being the first to fall when the logs near Big Creek were depleted and the logging moved on. Happy Camp and Kamook persisted until the 1920s.[1]^: 76–79

In the 1923 case Madera Sugar Pine Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission of California, the United States Supreme Court upheld death benefits to the non-resident alien dependents of employees who died as a result of no-fault industrial accidents. The decision upheld the Workmen's Compensation Act of California, which was found to not be in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling required that the Madera Sugar Pine Company compensate the partially dependent survivors of two Mexican laborers who had died on the job. This case established the legal principle that non-resident alien dependents are entitled to the same compensation as citizens under the state's worker's compensation laws.[25][26]