Crosscut Saw

This crosscut saw was used for logging cypress trees in what is now Big Cypress National Preserve. Two loggers were needed to use this saw, each grasping a wooden handle (one handle is missing from this saw). Cutting occurs as loggers pull the saw between them across a standing tree or felled timber.

The land within what is now the national preserve was heavily logged for its durable, rot­ resistant cypress. This wood was used for everything from pickle barrels and stadium seats to railroad ties and even PT boats during World War II. When the timber industry first developed an interest in the cypress trees of the Big Cypress Swamp in the 1920s, it was not uncommon to find trees up to 25 feet wide and 150 feet tall.

Much of the hard, dangerous work of logging, laying tracks for trains to transport the timber, and working in the sawmills was done by African Americans. Many were from Georgia, Alabama, and North Florida and had moved south as other forests in the Southeast were no longer productive. They lived in the "company towns" in and around the Big Cypress swamp like Copeland, Jerome, and Deep Lake.

As logging in the Big Cypress began in earnest in the 1940s, estimates were that it would take 40-50 years to exhaust the cypress in the swamp. With the advent of power saws in the 1950s, the logging rates increased dramatically. Between 1944 and 1956, a single sawmill shipped out 360 million board feet of cypress lumber from the Big Cypress swamp. Today visitors to Big Cypress National Preserve can see a stand of old growth trees that escaped the loggers at Robert's Lake Strand.