Forests, Fields, and The Falls: Connecting Minnesota. Forests, Fields, and The Falls: Connecting Minnesota.

 

"...A Symphony in Tin"

symphony-in-tin

Lumberjacks eating in lumber camp near Blackduck, 1900. 
Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection, Location No. HD5.7 r79

"...with 120 men setting down at a table and eating off tin plates and having tin cups, there's a kind of noise there that I don't know how to describe. I think you'd have to call it a symphony in tin. When you hear that rumbling, it's a sound similar to a beehive, but there'd still be the clank of the tin plates."

—Maggie Orr O'Neill

Maggie Orr O'Neill Oral History Interview, Oct. 1, 1955 (Mrs. O'Neill worked in a lumber camp in the 1880s.)