Sawmills and pulp mills developed along the banks of the Penobscot River in the late nineteenth century. Logs were floated from camps farther upstream. The work of "driving" logs downriver and breaking jams may have been the most dangerous occupation in the lumber industry. Once at the destination, as in this photograph, men sorted the logs to ensure contracts between extractors and the mills were fulfilled. There were similar operations along the major rivers of northern New Hampshire and Maine.

A different angle of the sorting gap is seen in MMN item 31389 (linked below).

The card does not bear a publication date, but it was mailed and postmarked in 1911. The card was printed in Germany by the W. A. Brown Company of Lincoln, Maine.