Antique Heart Pine and Sinker Cypress Logs Rafted Downstream in 1800s

The economical way to transport heart pine and cypress logs was to fashion them into crude rafts and float them to sawmills along southern rivers. Sometimes they extended hundreds of yards long. As luck would have it, these rafts would sometimes break apart. The logs would slip away down to the river bottom where they were perfectly preserved from oxygen and light by the cool water.