Greetings family, friends, and neighbors. I spent a summer in the late
1950's on the staff of Dimond - O near Mather, unaware at the time of the
Boy Scout camp's rich logging and railroad history. I hope that you find my
research in today's snippet, "All Shook UP", of interest.....Bill
Historic Snippets
ALL SHOOK UP
“SHOOK in the context of lumber refers to the pieces of wood, typically from a log, that are used to construct boxes, crates, or other wooden containers for shipping goods like fruit and vegetables. These pieces are then assembled to create the finished product, like a shipping box”.
Between 1917 and 1925 the California Peach Growers Association, a consortium of San Joaquin Valley fruit growers headquartered in Fresno, also known as the Peach & Fig Growers Association (CP&FG), operated a railroad and sawmill near Yosemite at Mather, California to provide members with a dependable source of wood shook for their shipping crates.
With a contract from the U.S. Forest Service to harvest government timber, CP&FG’s large twoband saw mill began turning out up to six carloads of shook material daily from its logging operations. One of the associations three geared steam locomotives transferred the loaded cars from the mill to the Hetch-Hetchy Railroad at Mather, joining empties being returned from San Francisco’s O’Shaughnessy dam project for the sixty nine mile journey to the connection with the Sierra Railway near Jamestown. From there the Sierra Railway hauled the shook to Oakdale for connection with Southern Pacific’s line to Fresno and CP&FG’s crate finishing operations. The completion of the O’Shaughnessy Dam and ending the status of the Hetch- Hetchy railroad as a common carrier in 1924 eliminated CP&FG’s only connection to the Central Valley signaling the end and dismantling of the association’s logging operations and shook mill. Learning of the sites’ availability, the Oakland Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America purchased twenty two acres on the middle fork of the Tuolumne River, buildings, bunk houses, and fully functional mess hall on the former site of the CP&FG’S logging camp, and obtained an annual use permit from the United States Forestry Service. Named for Camp Dimond in Oakland hills and beginning in 1926, the council provided a High Sierra camping experience for thousands of East Bay Scouts at Dimond-O for fifty seven summers until 1983 when the Forest Service use permit was repealed and the historic site returned to its natural pre-shook state.
-Bill 7/25
