From 1885-1900, loggers prodded oxen to skid logs off snowy hillsides to the river ice. When the ice thawed, a wall of logs roared downstream to a sawmill at the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork Rivers. By the early 1900s, a narrow gauge railroad crossed the Potomac Valley, on your left and took over the oxen's work. By the mid-1920s a full-scale railroad ran up the valley. Men loaded logs on railroad cars for a trip to the Anaconda Copper Mining Company's lumber mill in Bonner. Back then, the forest must have seemed an infinite source of big trees for the taking. Today, Lubrecht foresters study timber practices that better match natural processes.