Life in the Logging Camps of Central Oregon

From Locomotives to Legacy

If you drive through the Old Mill District in Bend today, it’s hard to imagine that this bustling hub of shops, restaurants, and river trails was once the end of the line for massive steam trains hauling ponderosa pine logs from deep in the Central Oregon forest. But for decades in the 20th century, the Brooks-Scanlon and Shevlin-Hixon lumber companies defined not just the industry here—they shaped entire communities.

One of those communities, a mobile Brooks-Scanlon logging camp known as BS Tanks, left behind little more than a wooden sign in the woods southeast of Bend. But for Dixie Caverhill Weberg, it was the first home she ever knew.

Bert, Dixie and Aloha Caverhill At Brooks-Scanlon camp near Sisters

“I was only three years old, but I can still hear the ‘foosh’ of the steam coming from the black monster as it came to a stop at the water tower beside my parents’ logging camp shack,” Dixie recalled. “I loved that sound and would sit on our porch step every day to greet the smelly locomotive and wave at the engineers.”

Dixie’s memories of growing up in the logging camps stretch from the mid-1940s into the 1950s—an era when families lived in simple wood shacks that could be hoisted onto flatcars and moved from one forest stand to the next. “You could have called them early-day mobile homes,” she joked. Her family’s shack, like the others, had just the basics: a few windows, a door, a cookstove—and gaps wide enough for snow to blow through. “I woke up one morning to white lines across the heavy quilt my grandmother had made for me,” she wrote. “Lines made from snow blowing through the cracks in the wall.”

When logging operations moved to a new stand of timber, the whole town moved with them. One of the biggest moves she remembered was from a site south of Bend to a spot just west of Sisters. The homes—about 30 in all—were craned up and rolled out on the rails. For Dixie and the other kids, it was a game to spot whose house was whose as the train passed over the highway trestle. “Our stovepipe was rolling from side to side,” she wrote, “and we were so afraid it would fall off.”

These weren’t just work camps—they were close-knit communities. There were schoolhouses (sometimes in old boxcars), central bathhouses, and in the Sisters camp, even a small grocery store run by a Scottish couple, Scotty and Peggy Low. Scotty had lost a leg in a logging accident and took to running the store with a mix of grit and humor. The oiled floors were pocked with holes from loggers’ cork boots, and the smell of pine, produce, and candy made it a magical place for any child. “I always looked for the big yellow cat who patrolled the store for mice,” Dixie wrote. “When she wasn’t curled up between the canned goods.” As vivid as Dixie’s memories are, they reflect just one slice of a much larger story.

The Rise of the Railroad Logging Camps

Brooks-Scanlon railroad logging camp at site known as BS Tanks 1940 This is the site our tour group visited on our field trip and the only visible sign of the camp is a wooden sign describing the camp. The arrival of the Oregon Trunk Railroad in 1911 made industrial-scale logging possible in Central Oregon. By 1916, two massive mills—Shevlin-Hixon on the west side of the Deschutes River and Brooks-Scanlon on the east—were running full steam, supplied by ever-growing networks of rail lines that stretched deep into the pine forests.

Logging operations were portable by design. Shevlin-Hixon, for instance, maintained a self-contained railroad logging town that moved with the timber, hauling its buildings, families, and operations to new sites every few years. The largest and longest-standing of these was LaPine Camp (1932–1942), followed by Summit and Chemult Camps. Each location had a school, cookhouse, barber shop, bathhouse, and even a post office and soda fountain. At its peak, Shevlin’s mobile town supported around 600 residents.

Moving logging camp residence from BS Tanks to Bull Springs 1941

These camps were the original company towns—isolated, self-reliant, and built for efficiency. Workers often rode into the woods each morning in “crummies,” rough crew buses packed with gear, lunch pails, and thermoses. For their families, life in the camps meant routines shaped by wood stoves, hand-pumped water, and outhouses—especially brutal in the winter. Still, many who grew up in these camps remember them fondly. “Growing up in that simple environment was truly a blessing,” Dixie wrote. “All the families looked out for each other. All of our needs were met… We felt safe and secure.”

Machines That Moved Mountains (of Pine)

The pace and scale of logging in those days were astonishing, thanks in part to cutting-edge steam-powered equipment. Shevlin-Hixon used Clyde self-propelling skidders and McGiffert loaders, massive machines capable of dragging logs overland and lifting them onto railcars with near-industrial precision. At peak efficiency, some skidders could move logs from a thousand feet away at 500 feet per minute.

It wasn’t just about the speed, though. These machines—and the men who ran them—redefined what was possible in the forest. Logging became a high-risk, high-reward profession. Dixie’s own family saw the dangers firsthand. Her grandfather lost his leg to a falling “widow maker” tree, and an uncle was permanently injured when a log rolled onto him. Despite the risks, generations of families stayed in the trade, building lives around it—some, like John Hudspeth of Crook County, would go on to build timber empires that shaped the region’s economy for decades.

Logging Towns Fade, But Stories Remain

By the mid-20th century, logging technology began to shift from rail to road. Steam gave way to internal combustion engines, and the great mobile camps became less necessary. The last log train in Central Oregon ran in December 1956. Today, the towns themselves are mostly gone. A few signs, like the one at BS Tanks, mark their existence. A few company houses from the Gilchrist mill town remain, painted brown and nestled in the pines. And in Prineville, the Bowman Museum preserves their stories.

But perhaps the most powerful legacies are the memories people like Dixie Caverhill Weberg carry—and share. “If there were fears from outside worldly sources, we kids didn’t know much about it,” she wrote. “We had steam trains and candy stores, hide-and-seek at dusk, and parents calling us home from their porches. We were happy.”

Want to Learn More?

Visit the A.R. Bowman Museum in Prineville to explore local logging artifacts, photos, and oral histories like Dixie’s. Your support helps preserve the people, places, and stories that shaped Central Oregon.