This Best 110 hp steam traction engine, built 1903-1906, was originally used by Pacific Borax Co. to pull ore wagons. The next owner was the Dixie Mill, near Sheep Ranch, where it was used to haul logs down the steep hillsides to the loading deck. The mill was purchased by Giacomo Oneto in 1923, and Ol' Beth was used there until the mill closed in the late 1940s. The passage of the Timber and Stone Act in 1878 allowed for the individual acquisition of 160-acre parcels of timbered land, and speculators made agreements with patentees, assembling vast tracts of prime, virgin groves of timber for sawmill investors. In the higher elevations, logging became a significant local industry in the 1890s through the 1940s.
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