White Mountain Chronicles: Jigger Johnson, the last woodsman

Jigger Johnson at Carter Dome. (U.S. FOREST SERVICE PHOTO)

Editor's note: The Mountain Ear was founded by Jane Golden Reilly and Steve Eastman in May 1976. The award-winning news weekly and lifestyle journal of Mount Washington Valley was sold by Eastman to Salmon Press in March 2005. Its last issue was in December 2014. Eastman — who died at age 58 from a brain tumor in April 2008 — always wanted to publish an annual book, hoping to call it "White Mountain Chronicles." In collaboration with Eastman's wife, Sarah W. Eastman, brother Tom Eastman (who worked at The Ear from 1979 before coming to The Sun in 2007) and former staff writer Karen Cummings, The Conway Daily Sun is publishing some of those stories relating to local history. The following story originally was published in the Aug. 12, 1983, edition of The Mountain Ear.

Jigger Johnson has been called the last of a colorful breed of loggers — that race of men who cut a swath of timber from Maine to Oregon and yelled like crazed devils every spring when the drive was in and they were released from the savage woods for a few days to pound the bars.

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