What are these things? I have come across photos of a few only in central Arkansas. None of them seem to still be there.
Dennis
I wish I could zoom in as well as see the image without that giant watermark, but my first impression is that it’s a charcoal making operation.
It looks like a paper mill I saw in the Sierras in the 60’s, but I can’t find a picture of one online.
They are called wigwam burners. They used to burn wood scraps from saw mills.
Thank you, Dallas! I will update the information. I wonder why I have only seen them in Arkansas.
I just looked up the Wikipedia article on them out of curiosity. Was their sole purpose to dispose of wood scraps? Did they ever use the heat they generated to do something useful like generate power to use in the mill? Or were they just a super sized version of burning a trash pile? It seems so inefficient to burn something and not do something useful with the energy released, but I guess people weren’t as concerned about such things at the time.
This also reminds me of playing Sim City back in high school. If you zoned an area industrial often times something called a “Smog-O-Matic” or something like that would pop up there, which as I remember looked a lot like these wigwam burners.
Looks like they were most common in Oregon where they were banned in the 1970s. Apparently they still operated in Arkansas in the mid 1980s. I also have a photos of paper plants blanketing the area with smoke.
Dennis
I’m in Arkansas. That looks very familiar to me. Can’t remember where/how I know it. It definitely an off shoot of the lumber/paper industries.
Reading the thread before posting is always a good idea, especially in GQ. They have already been clearly identified by Dallas Jones.
I live in southern Oregon, where wigwam burners used to be quite common. In fact, there was one still standing about 5 miles from where I grew up, it was taken down only recently. I just hopped onto Google Earth to link a pic, but it appears the most recent shot of that area was taken after it was removed. Pity. A cousin of mine actually managed to sneak into it (it was on private property) before it was torn down.
They were indeed simple, if huge, enclosed burn piles. I’ve heard stories form mill workers who worked in the lumberyards when they wigwam burners were still in use tell me that the burners would grow a dull red at night; I guess it was a pretty interesting sight. Of course, they spewed huge amounts of smoke and often left soot on everything for miles around.
Rather than harness the heat energy, mill operators found another use for wood chips and sawdust: particle board, or if you go down to your local Home Depot, fiberboard.
Here’s some pictures of some that are still (or recently) standing.
Here’s a video taken inside a quite dilapidated one. However, you get an idea of their size and function
in Arizona in the 1960’s, my Dad told me that they were charcoal burners, so I guess he thought the same as you. It was at a lumber yard. I think it was out of use even then? The internet tells me that he was wrong.
No, no. I wasn’t saying he was wrong. I’m saying I’ve seen them somewhere in south Arkansas. And remarking how they are surely offshoots of the tree industry. Which is huge in Arkansas. I was commening on the Arkansas connection. That’s all.
They were also pretty common in the SoW — seems that every lumbermill, and I was raised uphill from several, had at least one. The term I learned was “slash burner,” perhaps because they were used to burn the bark that was slashed from the logs before they hit the saws.
“Mystery Cone! Are you ready for your Mystery Cone? Is your Cone a Dreamboat? Or a Dud?”
They were just hollow cones with a screen at the top to catch some of the bigger embers. Burning up and wasting the wood scrap. They were all over the place when I was young. There were many small mills in operation until the old growth trees were gone. Now days the wood scraps are valuable and would be chipped up and sent to a paper mill instead of being burned.
Here is a picture of a company mill town called Bradwood. I lived there until I was 6 or so. Company owned the mill, the store, and all the houses which were rented to the workers. Dining hall, dance hall, a school up the road. The whole “I owe my soul to the company store” concept. The idea of company towns was that if the men could have a place to bring their wives and raise a family then they would actually show up for work, unlike the bachelors who would just get drunk in town and show up sometimes.
This was on the Columbia River where ocean going ships could pull right up to the dock and load lumber. I have fond memories of this place and time. It is now all gone but a sandy spot on the river shore. Noting left to indicate that the place existed.
The historic fishing web site was started by my father in law and some other old geezers. It is an interesting place of pictures if you are interested in that sort of thing.
They were used in Arizona to burn sawdust and scraps. One I remember vividly was in Payson, and there were several in the eastern high mountain regions.
I wonder if any are associated with the paper mill at Pine Bluff. You could smell that evil stink sometimes in Little Rock, forty miles away.
One general rule of thumb that definitely applies to wigwam burners is that pollution = waste. While the states are the ones that sometimes made them go away, many disappeared on their own. Don’t burn it, sell it.
One of the early uses of sawdust was compressed, fake logs. Bark was sold as bark dust for mulch. And of course there’s all sorts of fiberboard out there waiting to get wet and fall apart.
I want to emphasize how useless the screens on top were. Barely caught anything, often full of holes, etc.
Neil Young did a scene singing Soldier in his first movie Journey Through the Past in one. (Just a small fire in the center.)
Paper mills have a smell due to the digestion process that turns the wood pulp into something that you can make paper out of. Some sulfur and other compounds make that rotten egg or day old fart smell. Often depends upon the type of paper being produced.
Kraft paper process (think of brown paper grocer bags) smells the worst. Other types like computer or toilet paper do not smell as bad. There also tend to be “bug” settling ponds like waste treatment plants (think sewage).
Wood does not want to be digested and broken down into usable fibers. The reason that there are vast seams of coal is because there were forests living, dying, falling over and building up long before the bacteria evolved that could break down the cellulose. So it didn’t rot and kept building up. That is a simplified story of course.
Here is an article from the government of Wisconsin.
Pine Bluff makes kraft paper, but I haven’t smelled it in years. Thanks for thr link.
Smelled like a paycheck to many, many people.