The West Old & New November Vol. II Issue XI | Page 10

Cramer Creek - Timber War
In 1886 two logging companies fought over a valuable
resource.
An extract from Darlene Olson's book Up the Creek. Clinton, Montana
Valley Publishing: 1990

It was this gulch that was the scene of a timber war in 1886 between Hammond’s Big Blackfoot Logging Company and Bill
Thompson’s French Canadians.
Logging was crude and rough during this time and men took timber wherever they found it, skinned the forest bare, and paid
little regard to legal ownership.
Hammond owned a mill at Bonner and one at Bonita. His loggers had cleared most of the timber close to Bonner and he had to
close that mill. In order to keep the Bonita mill supplied, he had to move his men and equipment closer and find a supply of timber
within easy reach of Bonita. A worker was sent up Cramer Gulch in the fall of 1885 to put up a logging camp about two and a half
miles from the Bonita sawmill in preparation for Hammond’s loggers who would soon arrive.
Bill Thompson ran his lumber business out of Silver Bow County. He also wanted more timber and had his sights on Cramer.
In the fall of 1886, he told his gang of fifty French-Canadians to invade the gulch and take all the timber they could. Thompson
hired a man to ride herd on the men and see that their double-bitted axes slashed rapidly. His crew started up the gulch, placing the
Thompson brand on logs as fast as they could. Hammond’s people had already graded a road for the log haul and were building a
bridge over a long slough to connect the camp with the Bonita mill when Thompson’s men arrived. The Frenchmen began cutting,
and word was sent to Robert Coombs, Hammond’s supervisor at Bonita, who hurried up Cramer with his own gang to drive out
the Canadians.
The Frenchmen didn’t take kindly to the invitation to leave and several hand-to-hand fights broke out with Coombs and his
men retreating to Bonita. Coombs was a big, blustery man from New Brunswick who was angry and swearing when he got back to
the mill. Not one to take defeat graciously, he sent for Bill Harris, a fighting lumberjack working up Rock Creek, who had a run-in
or two himself with Thompson’s loggers.
Harris took over command of Hammond’s men at Cramer and tried to keep contact with Thompson’s forces to a minimum, all
the while both camps taking out what timber they could.
Thompson’s foreman had offered to fight any man in the Hammond crowd to decide ownership of the timber. Harris was now
on the scene and said he would fight anyone in the Thompson crowd, with the winner to have all the logs. There were no takers, so
Harris upped the odds and offered to fight any three men. Harris was considered so tough that no one would accept his challenge.
The timber war developed into a bushwhacking contest. It soon became a case of get all the logs possible and get them fast. As
soon as a tree was felled, it was branded either with the Hammond or the Thompson brand and became the property of the outfit
which had branded it. Sometimes this theory didn’t work. If a tree was not branded as soon as it crashed to the earth, someone
from the opposing camp would be there to lay claim to it. There would be some shoving about and blows would be struck. All
sorts of tricks were played. Chains were loosened and loads dumped. It became a contest of petty annoyances. In the mix-up of
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