Michael Bergazzi: Santa Cruz Lumbering

Photo: The Newell Creek Mill

For the complete text [PDF] of Santa Cruz Lumbering (Escholarship). Includes complete audio (streaming or download) for the oral history. Note: Due to editing by the narrator and the Project, there may be minor differences between the audio recording and the transcript. Please quote from the transcript as the record and not the audio. Audio will be found under "Supporting Material."

1964, xii, 207 pp, 3 illus.

A lifetime resident of Santa Cruz County, Michael Bergazzi spent the years between 1901 and 1922 working in almost every phase of redwood lumbering, both in the mills and in the woods. For the major portion of his career he was a sawyer, but he also worked as a faller, peeler, bucker, donkey rigger, log dogger, and carriage setter. He described the many procedures involved in lumbering and also commented on the life of a lumberman-- the wages, hours and working conditions. In the latter part of the manuscript he discussed Santa Cruz during the early years of the twentieth century.