A jack works steam engine in a small pond just north of Rollins Pond near a road down from the Floodwood Reservation Boy Scout Camp on West Pine Pond to their Outpost on Rollins. The railroad tracks from Floodwood are perhaps twenty yards from this spot. The scouts called this Jack Works Pond.A Jack Works, or jackworks, was a place where logs were floated to be loaded on to railroad cars. They usually employed a stationary steam engine to power a cable loader. They had a boom with a cable to lift logs out of the water to load onto rail cars. The steam engines were later replaced by gasoline engines.
Watertown Daily Times, January 29, 1914
...When convenient the logs are run out on to the frozen surfaces of the lakes, and then towed to a landing where they are taken up into the railroad cars by means of what is known as a Jackworks...
Essex County Republican, January 26, 1923
The O.W.D. gas-log loader at the Jack-works near Floodwood broke the record Wednesday, Jan. 10th, when it loaded 20 flat cars of hardwood logs. Thursday and Friday, Jan. 11th and 12th, it loaded 22 cars each day, the day consisting of nine hours.
The foreman is Dan McDonald and the loaderman Andrew Hulskim. Some huge tree trunks were among the logs follows:
Beech Stump, 32 inches…
