Many early white settlers became loggers. Puget Sound supported the shipping industry with its timber.

Logging was very wasteful then because the pitch on the bottom 10 feet of the Douglas fir was so sticky it jammed their primitive saws and made it almost impossible for loggers to cut trees close to the ground.

The fallers worked in pairs, from springboards high off the ground, pulling a cross-cut saw between them. It was a good joke to tell one's partner to get a saddle if he wanted to ride the saw instead of pulling it. They worked in a certain order: swampers, then fallers, then axes or saws.

Logging was not a job for a married man. The logger had to travel a lot and was paid very low wages. Also, it was dangerous, so a married man needed to find another job. Loggers enlisted Indians to help them and they paid them in trade goods.