In 90 years a spruce grows too big to span with your arms. A very ancient giant spruce is about 300 years old.
Restoring the forest is certainly a a lot better now, as it needs to do because today we can cut it so much faster as well. A helicopter logging operation whisks the best trees out of the woods at 200 km/h. How did we get from 50 kms a year with steam power to 200 an hour? After the Second World War, when at least the aircraft industry switched to selective logging from the awful slash-and-dash we started with, forest industry machines accelerated to a walking pace. Truly. You could walk alongside the museum's biggest not-quite-modern machines at full throttle without getting out of breath.
Today's diesel skidders look like toys beside our Le Tourneau Electric Arch built in 1957. It weighs 30 tons and in 1960 was driven -- on the road -- from Terrace down to tidewater at Kitimat. That must have been something to see; it takes up the whole road! The company thinks our Electric Arch is the last one in existence.
We've talked about the big machines because they make impressive pictures; we're just like the TV newcasters in that respect. Inside the museum building you'll find more logging paraphernalia going from hand tools to the first generations of chainsaws. Imagine spending half a day cutting a tree with a two-man crosscut saw. Even the first chainsaws took two people to carry and use, you couldn't could throw one of those over your shoulder and trot off through the woods.
Between the inside items and the dinosaurs standing in the grass are some intermediate items in the museum's driving shed. Pride of place in the shed goes to a completely restored Tugaway pole-railway tractor converted in 1927 from a Fordson farm tractor (see the 'Getting Around' page).