Buena Vista Logging Days

Buena Vista Logging Days

FebruaryIn the 1800s, the logging of Minnesota's pine forests near Bemidji was in full swing. During the winter timber harvest, lumberjacks guided teams of Percheron horses, who hauled logs along ice-covered roads. Although the timber industry still works the woods around Bemidji, the golden days of the Minnesota logging boom only lasted 50 years. But the area continues to remember, recreate, and celebrate the skills of the old-time lumberjack by holding a festival at Buena Vista village and logging camp located north of Bemidji. Each year participants dressed in red plaid wool shirts demonstrate log scaling and compete in axe chopping and crosscut-sawing contests. They also guide teams of Percheron, Belgian, and Clydesdale draft horses in log loading and hauling demonstrations.
Visitors are transported to the logging camp aboard horse-powered sleighs and are served lumberjack camp meals all day long. Buena Vista village is also the home of the Lumberjack Hall of Fame, where up to 100 of the old lumberjacks are honored and inducted during the festival. Many of those fabled laborers of the north woods, some of whom are nearly 100 years old, attend the festival each year.
CONTACTS:
Buena Vista Ski Area
19276 Lake Julia Dr. N.W.
Bemidji, MN 56601
800-777-7958 or 218-243-2231
www.bvskiarea.com