Wigwam Burners
Today, wigwam burners. The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
______________________
My family left a city, and moved to Roseburg, Oregon, in 1946. And the first sights that greeted us there were huge iron teepees – black conical towers spewing gray smoke. Roseburg was a logging town – population around 7000 and rising. First the war, now returning veterans, had increased our need for wood. And Roseburg lay on the edge of large stands of virgin Douglas fir.
Lumber mill near Roseburg. Wigwam burner on left
Huge trees – some a thousand years old and two hundred feet tall. Let us put aside the destruction of primeval forests for a moment. Let’s just and trace the process. Loggers would remove branches and cut the logs into sections. Logging trucks then took those cut sections to mills in Roseburg.
Virgin Douglas Firs, about to be cut down
There, they removed the bark and some outer wood. They then cut the log into boards. And here, an unfamiliar term: kerf. Kerf is the width of the cut made by saws – the cut that turned some of a tree into sawdust.
These great iron wigwams then burned those outer cuttings – and some sawdust as well. It seemed the best way to get rid of them. But they also sold some of the sawdust to all of us. We used it as fuel for our homes. So what remained of those trees after lumber was more wood-smoke perfuming the air of our town.
Today, those lowering teepees are a thing of the past. Roseburg is now a commercial town surrounded by outlying lumber mills. Much of what went into the burners now has value. It might be made into particle board or paper, for example.
But Roseburg of the nineteen forties was centered on logging. High schoolers would find sixty-cent-an-hour summer jobs, pulling boards from giant saws. I did some work as a helper on a survey crew, laying out forest access roads in previously untouched stands of virgin trees – those huge ancient owners of this place! I saw them fall with thunderous booms.
Cut down Douglas Fir falling
My sixteen months there, were hypnotic – surreal. But I left. And, back at my fifty-fifth high school reunion, I found that forty-three percent of us had died. Today, I’m pretty sure that I (who left town) am the only one left standing. Most of those I knew, died of cancer.
Central Roseburg in 1946
Wood smoke is a seductive threat. Its siren perfume calls us to fireplaces and campfires. It beguiled me in Roseburg long ago. And I find environmentalists today who wax poetical about their wood-heated cabins. (I’ll cite a report that shows one woodburning stove producing as much particle pollution as three thousand gas furnaces, each delivering the same energy.)
But I recall those old wigwam-burning-cones today. And I can almost smell their campfire perfume. It’s seductive – even when I know better.
I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.
(Theme music)
Some sources:
What Can You Do With Logging Slash After a Timber Harvest?
Wildfire and wood smoke effects on human airway epithelial cells: A scoping review - ScienceDirect
The more general term for a wigwam burner is “Wood-waste burner.”
All photos taken either by John Lienhard III or James Lienhard.
A small prewar sawmill
This Episode first aired on October 12, 2026.