Monadnock Moment No. 191

Multi Era: 1846 to 1909

The Lumber King

George Van Dyke was born in Quebec in 1846. He did not own a pair of shoes until he was eleven and attended school for only four years. As a youngster he left home to find work and took a job as a logger on the Connecticut River. Van Dyke became a river-driver working on the log drives which floated timber down the river each year. He soon became a foreman of the log drives and passed along the western border of Cheshire County many times as his crews worked their logs down the river. Van Dyke probably knew the saloons of North Walpole like the back of his hand.

He soon went into business for himself and opened his own mills. Even after he became a millionaire lumberman and passed his 60th birthday, however, he continued to follow the drives down the Connecticut. The drive of 1909 was his biggest ever, containing 53,000,000 feet of timber. In August of that year, as he walked the drive through Bellows Falls, Van Dyke sprained his ankle very badly in the river bed. As a result, he had to follow the drive in his Stanley Steamer the next week. At Turners Falls he and his chauffeur pulled up in the Steamer to watch the drive from a bank 75 feet above the river. No one knows what happened next, whether Van Dyke ordered the chauffeur to drive closer to the edge or the driver made a fatal mistake, but the car plunged over the edge into the river 75 feet below. George Van Dyke died later that day after plunging into the river of which he had been King for so many years.