Last Clam Falls Sensation, The

DESCRIPTION: "I got on board a tote team, at the town of Taylors Falls" to set out for a logging camp in 1874. The team arrives after a long, tedious trip. One of the loggers misbehaves with the local women, resulting in a fight between the loggers
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1965 (Dunn, _The St. Croix_, from an uncited source)
KEYWORDS: logger clothes travel fight
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
ADDITIONAL: James Taylor Dunn, _The St. Croix: Midwest Border River_, reprint edition with new introduction published 1979 by the Minnesota Historical Society press, pp. 251-254, "The Last Clam Falls Sensation" (1 text)
NOTES [175 words]: Information about this song is sadly lacking. Dunn, although he quotes a full text, does not tell his source. It appears to have been a manuscript, not an informant, because most of the names are left blank. Dunn thinks it might have been sung to the tune of "The Jam on Gerry's Rocks," although he does not specify which of the two tunes he means.
Dunn reports that the village of Clam Falls was founded in 1872 by Daniel F. Smith. It is a tiny place, not located on most atlases; it is slightly south of a line between Grantsburg and Shell Lake, Wisconsin, and about half way between the two. It is just about due northeast of Taylors Falls, the starting point of the song, which is on the Saint Croix river (in Minnesota), which is the limit of navigation on that river. Clam Falls is on the Clam River, which eventually flows into the Saint Croix, but its path is too convoluted to serve as a good path to the camp. Frankly, I can't see how they expected to get the logs out of Clam Falls. Which may be why the area was still unsettled in 1872. - RBW
Last updated in version 2.5
File: JTDST251

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