AINE TO CALIFORNIA

_Collected from Various Sources and
Embellished for Publication_

[Illustration]

Text and Illustrations
By
W. B. Laughead

_Published for the Amusement
of our Friends by_

The RED RIVER LUMBER COMPANY
MINNEAPOLIS, WESTWOOD, CAL., CHICAGO,
LOS ANGELES-:-SAN FRANCISCO

_NINETEEN TWENTY-TWO_

PAUL Bunyan is the hero of lumbercamp whoppers that have been handed
down for generations. These stories, never heard outside the haunts of
the lumberjack until recent years, are now being collected by learned
educators and literary authorities who declare that Paul Bunyan is "the
only American myth."

The best authorities never recounted Paul Bunyan's exploits in narrative
form. They made their statements more impressive by dropping them
casually, in an off hand way, as if in reference to actual events of
common knowledge. To over awe the greenhorn in the bunkshanty, or the
paper-collar stiffs and home guards in the saloons, a group of
lumberjacks would remember meeting each other in the camps of Paul
Bunyan. With painful accuracy they established the exact time and place,
"on the Big Onion the winter of the blue snow" or "at Shot Gunderson's
camp on the Tadpole the year of the sourdough drive." They elaborated on
the old themes and new stories were born in lying contests where the
heights of extemporaneous invention were reached.

In these conversations the lumberjack often took on the mannerisms of
the French Canadian. This was apparently done without special intent and
no reason for it can be given except for a similarity in the mock
seriousness of their statements and the anti-climax of the bulls that
were made, with the braggadocio of the _habitant_. Some investigators
trace the origin of Paul Bunyan to Eastern Canada. Who can say?

[Illustration: _Logging Road near Westwood, California. White Pine and
Old Fashioned Winters made Paul Bunyan feel at home._]

* * * * *

PAUL Bunyan came to Westwood, California in 1913 at the suggestion of
some of the most prominent loggers and lumbermen in the country. When
the Red River Lumber Company announced their plans for opening up their
forests of Sugar Pine and California White Pine, friendly advisors shook
their heads and said,

"Better send for Paul Bunyan."

Apparently here was the job for a
Superman,--quality-and-quantity-production on a big scale and great
engineering difficulties to be overcome. Why not