Lumberjacks, Legends, and the Art of Telling a Whopper

By Kimberly Grist


Have you ever known someone who could take a perfectly ordinary story and make it just a little bigger with every telling?

My own mother could tell some whoppers. While her tales may not have reached Paul Bunyan proportions, she knew how to stretch a story enough to bring a smile, while leaving just enough truth tucked inside to make you wonder.

The art of stretching the truth for the sake of a good story is nothing new. Some of America's most beloved folk legends grew out of just such storytelling traditions, including those shared among lumberjacks in the northern forests.

Life in those logging camps was anything but easy. The days were long, the work dangerous, and the winters bitterly cold. Armed with axes and crosscut saws, lumberjacks felled towering trees, hauled timber through snow and mud, and often spent months far from home. 

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The History, Folklore, and Tall Tales of America's Lumberjacks

After a long day of hard work, a good story could provide some much-needed laughter and entertainment. And when one lumberjack told an outrageous tale, you can imagine another trying to top it with one even more unbelievable. With each retelling, the stories grew a little taller, the feats a little grander, and the legendary lumberjack a little bigger.

And from those larger-than-life tales emerged one of America's most recognizable folk heroes—Paul Bunyan.

A Lumberjack-Sized Appetite

All that hard work required a tremendous amount of food. Early logging camps relied on pork, beans, and bread as staples, along with salt beef or fish, biscuits, flapjacks, and molasses. Fresh food was hard to come by, especially in winter.

As logging operations grew, so did the menu. Camp cooks served hearty meals of meat, potatoes, stews, vegetables, fresh-baked bread, pies, and plenty of hot coffee. A good cook was an important man in camp, especially considering that historians estimate loggers performing strenuous winter work could consume as many as 9,000 calories a day!

Of course, once the storytellers got involved, even a lumberjack-sized appetite wasn't quite impressive enough.

Paul Bunyan needed a breakfast as enormous as he was.

Now that's a lumberjack breakfast.

From Campfire Tale to Lumber Salesman

Paul Bunyan's stories eventually traveled beyond the logging camps and began appearing in print. In 1906, James MacGillivray published an early version of the legend, and a few years later, a Detroit newspaper ran an expanded story.

It was William B. Laughead, a former lumberjack turned advertising illustrator, who played a key role in bringing Paul Bunyan to a wider audience, showing how legends can shape marketing and branding efforts.

In 1914, Laughead put the legendary lumberjack to work for the Red River Lumber Company.

And what was Paul selling?

Lumber, of course.

At the time, the company faced a challenge. Lumber buyers in the East were familiar with eastern white pine, but many were hesitant to purchase pine harvested in the West. Red River needed to convince them that its California pine was just as dependable—and that its enormous lumber operation in Westwood could provide a steady supply.

That's where Paul Bunyan came in.

Through his humorous stories and illustrations, Laughead helped promote the company's lumber while introducing the larger-than-life lumberjack to a much wider audience. His work helped shape the Paul Bunyan Americans would come to recognize and even introduced his famous companion, Babe the Blue Ox.

Title page from The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan (1922). Text and illustrations by William B. Laughead. Published by the Red River Lumber Company. Source: Internet Archive / Wikimedia Commons.

And the Stories Kept Growing...

Once you have a lumberjack the size of Paul Bunyan, there's really no reason to let geography—or common sense—stand in the way of a good story.

According to various tales, Paul and Babe left footprints that became Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. Babe was supposedly strong enough to straighten crooked logging roads simply by pulling on them. And some storytellers even gave Paul credit for digging the Grand Canyon.

Were any of those stories true? Of course not, but perhaps that was never the point. After all, where's the fun in spinning a yarn if you can't stretch the truth a little?

A Little More Storytelling...

As you might have guessed, I inherited a bit of my mother's love for storytelling. While I can't promise any lumberjack-sized whoppers, I do enjoy spinning a tale filled with history, humor, romance, and sometimes a little unexpected mischief.

After all, Faith, Friends, and Good Clean Fun are at the heart of the stories I love to share.

And speaking of unexpected mischief, let me introduce you to Joshua Jenkins from A Sleigh Ride for Georgia.

Joshua is a livery owner who prefers the company of horses to people. Between running his business and caring for his younger sisters, he has plenty to keep him busy. The last thing he needs is a wife.

Unfortunately, his well-meaning family has other ideas. They've taken it upon themselves to arrange a marriage for him—without bothering to get his permission!

And Joshua certainly isn't interested in taking some young lady on a romantic, starlit sleigh ride.

But as any good storyteller knows, sometimes the best tales begin when things don't go quite as planned.

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Now It's Your Turn

Did you grow up with someone who could tell a good tall tale? Maybe a grandparent, parent, uncle, or neighbor who could turn an ordinary story into something unforgettable?

I'd love to hear one of your family's favorite “whoppers.”

Connect with Kimberly:

Fans of historical romance set in the late 19th century will enjoy stories combining History, Humor, and Romance, emphasizing Faith, Friends, and Good, Clean Fun.

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Johnny Appleseed: The Man Behind the Legend

By Kimberly Grist

Mention Johnny Appleseed, and most of us picture a barefoot fellow wandering across the American frontier, wearing a cooking pot on his head and scattering apple seeds wherever he went.

But how much of that familiar story is true?

As it turns out, the real Johnny Appleseed may be even more interesting than the legend.

Johnny Appleseed Was a Real Person

Born September 26, 1774, John Chapman became known as Johnny Appleseed as he traveled through the developing American frontier.

And yes, he really did carry apple seeds—but he wasn't simply tossing them along the roadside and hoping for the best.

Chapman deliberately established nurseries, often choosing locations where he expected pioneers to soon arrive. He planted seeds, protected the young trees with fences, and returned to tend his nurseries. Once the seedlings were large enough, settlers could transplant them to their farms and homesteads.

So instead of picturing Johnny scattering seeds as he walked along a trail, perhaps we should picture a surprisingly savvy frontier nurseryman.

Not the Shiny Red Apples We Picture

The apples growing on Chapman's trees probably looked nothing like the perfect red apples pictured in storybooks.

Apple trees grown from seed don't produce an exact copy of the apple the seed came from. The resulting fruit can vary considerably in size, color, flavor, and quality.

On the early American frontier, apples weren't grown only for eating fresh, either. Seedling apples could be used for cider and vinegar and served many household purposes.

Johnny's trees may not have produced the sort of apple you'd tuck into a lunchbox, but they were valuable to pioneer families nonetheless.

Did He Really Wear a Cooking Pot on His Head?

Maybe—at least for a time.

In 1871, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine published W. D. Haley’s “Johnny Appleseed: A Pioneer Hero,” along with several illustrations of Chapman. Written twenty-six years after his death, the article is one of the early sources that helped shape the Johnny Appleseed legend.

When describing Chapman’s unusual headgear, Haley wrote that “his first experiment was with a tin vessel that served to cook his mush.” Unfortunately, the vessel didn’t protect his eyes from the sun, so Chapman reportedly replaced it with a homemade pasteboard hat with an enormous peak in front.

So the famous cooking-pot hat wasn’t a myth. Instead, it originated from a colorful detail in an early account of the real man and evolved alongside the legend.

Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman), woodcut illustration from W. D. Haley’s “Johnny Appleseed: A Pioneer Hero,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, November 1871. Image source: Harvard University copy via HathiTrust; reproduced by the Linda Hall Library.

The Man Behind the Legend

John Chapman really did plant apple seeds, establish nurseries, live simply, and dress rather unusually. But over time, those facts grew into the Johnny Appleseed that generations of children have come to know.

And perhaps that's part of the fun of American folklore—discovering that sometimes the true story behind a legend is just as interesting as the legend itself.

Did you grow up hearing stories about Johnny Appleseed? Which part of the real story surprised you most?

Writing from Firsthand Sources

My latest completed novella, A Faraway Life--one of three stories in an anthology titled Mercer’s Belles--involved a first for me, which was creating a story that had its base in real-life events. Anyone who grew up in Seattle has heard about these women who traveled from the East to Seattle in 1864 and again in 1866 and took on important roles in developing the frontier society. The single or widowed women relocated for the sake of becoming teachers in a territory with very few women. They either listened to an appeal made by Asa S. Mercer, former president of the Territorial University of Washington, in a Massachusetts church or read newspaper ads in eastern newspapers offering jobs. Every woman who chose to be brave and venture west saw the opportunity as one that would better her life circumstances.

On the planned four-month journey leaving New York City in mid January, 1866, was Roger Conant, a journalist for The New York Times. He journaled his impressions of the travelers, noted the weather conditions (including a lunar eclipse), and recorded the experiences of socializing at American consulates and foreign embassies in several ports of call. His job was to write accounts of the voyage for the newspaper and post them along the voyage. The venture was the subject of much debate with most people denigrating the women who made the trip as being desperate to obtain a husband. But the bulk of the women truly wanted to become teachers. Conant’s journal was not published in his lifetime. A chance meeting connected a researcher studying the Pacific Northwest and Conant’s niece who had Conant’s journal in her possession.


Ninety-four years after the trip, the journal was published. I took advantage of his journal entries (he wrote almost daily) and had my characters enjoy several noted events. Because of what I’m assuming is a journalist’s attention to detail, I gathered specifics about the ship’s layout, menu, social activities, and personalities, which proved a great help in shaping the plot during the voyage. I will look for similar firsthand sources for future books.

Mercer’s Belles, Timeless Western Collection book 3, will release on September 17, 2019.
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BLURB for A Faraway Life

Teacher Sorcha Geraghty needs a fresh start after the death of her beau and a factory accident maimed her hand. Asa Mercer’s call for teachers for Washington Territory provides a new opportunity, and she joins his ocean-going expedition. Upon arrival, she learns of the expectation for the women to become wives to the many bachelors, and she has to figure out a new plan.

Logging manager Lang Ingemar needs a teacher to provide basic English instruction to his Swedish-speaking crew and keep them out of trouble when they go to Seattle. When he convinces Miss Geraghty to relocate to the logging camp, he has no idea the ways his life will be changed.



I will give away two copies to individuals willing to read and post a review within three days of the anthology’s release.