DCHP-1 Online

skidway

• 1a n. Lumbering, Hist. a prepared road having greased skids (def. 1d) over which logs were dragged by teams of mules, oxen, or horses.

  See also: skid ((n.)) (def. 1d)  skidroad ((n.))  (def. 1)  

  • 1892  (1908)  The logs are generally brought from the places where they are cut ("logging camps") to the shore on "skid-ways," after which they are formed into rafts and these are towed to the various mills.

• 1b n. Lumbering a slide or chute down which logs are skidded (def. 1) or dragged by a donkey engine.

  See also: skidroad ((n.))  (def. 2)  skid ((v.)) (def. 1)  

  • 1922  (1928)  The logs seemed to leap from position and bounce down the skidway. They plunged like live things into the water.

• 2a n. Lumbering a bed or inclined platform of two or more timbers on which logs are piled at a brow (def. 1).

  See also: brow (def. 1)  skid ((n.)) (def. 2)  

  • 1910  The men at "the dump" were piling the logs on huge skidways. . . .
  • 1912  Swamper, the man who cuts and clears the roots from the narrow trails through the forest from the standing timber to the skidway at the edge of the logging road. . . .
  • 1929  (1930)  When the logs had been cut, they pulled them out of the bush with their teams and piled them on a skidway ready for loading and hauling to the mill.
  • 1961  Logs were skidded to the road and laid up on skidways from where they were loaded on sleighs.

• 2b n. the area where logs are thus piled.

  • 1942  Main skidding trails should lead to skidway on as favourable a grade as possible. . . .
  • 1948  Bucking of the trees into desired pulpwood lengths is done by means of a power saw mounted on sawing table at skidway.

• 2c n. the skids (def. 1c) and the logs piled on it.

  See also: skid ((n.)) (def. 1c)  skidded landing  

  • c1963  This unit [a sort of tractor] goes into the forest to get a load of tree length logs, winches the wood to its arch and delivers it to roadside piles of logs called skidways.
  • 1967  . . . trees containing stem rot are difficult to separate once they are in skidways or fed to slashers.

• 3 n. an inclined ramp of poles or logs used to move canoes, boats, etc. from a higher to a lower position or vice versa.

  • 1923  "I'm thinking we'll have to make some new skidways afore we haul up the boats for the winter, and you and Luke had better edge up the axes in a way."
  • 1954  Loading up next morning, with the canoe rocking and slapping about in the waves, was not easy in spite of a log skidway that I had made.
  • 1956  He cut green alder poles and laid them for a skidway, then the three of them slid the finished canoe to the water's edge.