Regional History Project Oral Histories

A lifetime resident of Santa Cruz County, Michael Bergazzi spent the years between 1901 and 1922 working in almost every phase of redwood lumbering, both in the mills and in the woods. For the major portion of his career he was a sawyer, but he also worked as a faller, peeler, bucker, donkey rigger, log dogger, and carriage setter. He described the many procedures involved in lumbering and also commented on the life of a lumberman-- the wages, hours and working conditions. In the latter part of the manuscript he discussed Santa Cruz during the early years of the twentieth century.