Dolbeer's Donkey Engine 

"... improvement is the order of the day, and there is no reason why the ox team should not make way for the steam engine as the stage coach has the [railroad] engine." — Humboldt Times, July 31, 1881

Depending on your point of view, the Dolbeer Steam Donkey was the greatest labor saver in the logging industry's history or the nemesis of redwoods, being the machine that hastened the reduction of the once mighty groves to just 5 percent of what they'd been before the coming of Europeans. The engine revolutionized the lumber business, replacing teams of oxen — sometimes 20 and more — for several decades before its own replacement by the internal combustion engine.

Introduced by John Dolbeer in 1881 and patented the following year, the steam donkey's advantages were immediately obvious. Unlike oxen, it performed flawlessly in hot and cold weather and wasn't bothered by muddy, slippery conditions. By the turn of the century, 35 were in use in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, with nearly 400 working down the entire West Coast.

Dolbeer's original steam donkey, inspired by similar engines on ships, consisted of a wood-burning boiler and a "simplex" (single acting cylinder), connected to a horizontal "gypsy" winch drum (see illustration). The whole contraption was mounted on wooden skids, so the donkey could haul itself to a convenient location near the trees being felled. Later models were larger and more complicated, with duplex (compound) engines and multiple drums. (Why "donkey?" The usual story is that, when steam-powered winches were first to load ships, seamen considered them half as powerful as horses.)

Although later adapted for many tasks in the timber harvesting business, steam donkeys were originally used to haul newly felled redwoods (branches pruned) from where they lay to a skid road, en route to the company sawmill. A thick hemp rope, later a steel cable, was attached to the downed log by the "choker setter," who visually signaled the "whistle punk" — usually a kid — who in turn let the "donkeyman" know to start dragging the log in by opening the regulator which activated the winch. The fourth member of the team, the "spool tender," guided the line over the drum with a stick. Once the log had been yarded, or hauled in, a "line horse" pulled the line back out for the next log. By one estimate, a good crew could haul 5,000 tons of logs in a single day.

John Dolbeer (1827-1902) headed west from New England, hoping to join the Gold Rush. Instead, in 1853, he purchased a mill in Eureka before joining forces with lumber baron (and, later, mansion builder) William Carson, forming the Dolbeer and Carson Lumber Co. in 1863. Their huge mill operated on the waterfront, on the present site of Halverson Park, until the 1970s.

Dolbeer's life story is not a happy one. After recovering financially from several lumber mill fires, he married late in life, only to have his wife take her own life following a long illness, and his young son die in an accident. His bad luck reached beyond the grave: His daughter also committed suicide two years after his own death. He is memorialized today in the name of the Eureka street that runs south from St. Joe's Hospital to Hemlock Street.

Barry Evans (he/him, [email protected]) wonders why it took so long to develop the donkey engine after James Watt's 1776 steam engine was shown to be viable.