George Van Dyke - Gilded Age New England Lumber Baron

After the end of the Civil War, the United States went on a growth and building spree that demanded huge amounts of lumber. In the west, this lumber came from the upper northwest corner of the country, from Oregon and Washington. In the east, it was shipped down the Connecticut River from Maine and the Connecticut Lakes region, in huge shipments of logs managed by log drivers, who “rode the logs” down the river, risking life and limb to make sure the logs kept moving, breaking up any log jams that occurred along the way. David Sumner, the river’s first log baron, had made a fortune moving logs downriver. He died in 1867, and his enterprises were small compared to the huge companies that dominated the lumber trade during the Gilded Age.

In David Sumner’s time, logs were floated all the way down the Connecticut River from the headwaters near the Canadian border to the mouth of the river into the Atlantic in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. By the late 1800’s, people in Springfield, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut had more leisure time and more money. They enjoyed using the river for recreational boating, forcing lumber companies to process their logs further upriver. As a result, several lumber companies combined resources and started lumber mills in Holyoke and at Mount Tom in Northampton. In a logical sequence of events, these companies merged and became the Connecticut River Lumber Company in 1879.

The Connecticut River Lumber Company was the biggest lumber company that had been seen on the river. David Sumner’s goal in business was to support his family, and he managed to do that in very well, even building a mansion that stands to this day. Sumner’s fortune and his “mansion” were small potatoes compared to the fortunes that the CRL Co amassed in the late 1800’s. Business owners in the Guilded Age weren’t called “robber barons” for nothing. They let nothing stand in their way, and George Scott and Thomas Pearsall of CRL were no exception.

CRL was not, however, the only company driving logs on the river. The Turners Falls Lumber Company and the McIndoe Falls Lumber Company also floated their stock down the Connecticut. The season was too short for log drivers and their bosses to sit around and wait for other log companies to clear the water. When CRL tried to drive out their competition, they found the owner of the McIndoes Falls Company to be extremely stubborn and difficult. In a prime example of cutthroat competition, the story is that George Scott told one of his managers to “go back up there and kill him off”. Apparently the McIndoe Falls guy was too tough even to kill, so the next best thing was to hire him. In 1884, CRL’s general manager retired due to failing eyesight, and the company hired George Van Dyke to replace him.

George Van Dyke was born in 1846, in a log cabin in Quebec. He was the fifth of eight children. His family was poor, and he started working in a lumber camp in Maine at age 14 and by age 19 was managing a crew on the river. Although he did not have much formal education, George had a sharp business mind, a strong will, and a drive to make money fueled by his impoverished childhood. These attributes, with practical experience working with lumber and the powerful physical strength acquired through years of arduous labor, combined to produce the most powerful and aggressive timber baron in New England history.

By 1870, George was working for himself, and bought several sawmills along the Connecticut River. Through business deals and hard work, and probably some underhandedness as well, he began amassing a fortune. Bill Gove, in his book “Log Drives on the Connecticut River” describes one of George’s first business deals. “In 1879, Van Dyke found himself unexpectedly in temporary possession of another sawmill on the river. He made a $100 purchase of a timber lot in Hereford, Quebec and parlayed that into a cut of about a million feet of logs. (Translation: The adjoining landowners probably had some of their logs removed also.)” One gets the impression that this was typical of George Van Dyke, ruthless and not above a little extra-legal maneuvering, especially if he could get away with it.

It seems that things always worked that way for George Van Dyke during that decade. He took that million feet of logs and drove them to a sawmill in South Lancaster, New Hampshire, just as the mill went bankrupt and none of the sawmill crew would work. As the bank took ownership of the mill, George commandeered his own crew of drivers to operate the sawmill and cut up his logs. All this just when lumber prices had skyrocketed, leaving George with a profit of $10,000 when everything was said and done.

In 1877, he and his partner Henry Merrill took over the sawmill at McIndoe Falls when that mill’s former owners went bankrupt. It wasn’t long before George bought out Henry’s part of the business and became sole owner. A few years after becoming general manager of the Connecticut River Lumber Company, he bought a part ownership of the company and became company president. In 1897, George paid George Scott and Pearsall $1.5 milllion dollars and became sole owner of the company.

As the years went by, George recognized that it would be easier to cart supplies and equipment up and down the river by railroad rather than by water. Established railroad lines did not want to expand to the North Country, fearing there wouldn’t be enough business. Undaunted, George built the Upper Coos Railroad and the Upper Coos and Hereford Railroad, which extended all the way to Sherbrooke, Quebec. Although he still shipped his logs down the Connecticut River, he did build some railroad spurs east and west of the river, to access even more timber.