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The History of Stump Pullers — Why America Built Giant Machines to Rip 30-Ton Trees From The Ground

Kronoset

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Why did America need stump-pulling machines? 🌲⚙️ This video explores the forgotten industry that helped turn vast forests into farmland, from horse-drawn Hercules pullers to steam-powered giants and even farming with dynamite. It’s a story of engineering, westward expansion, and the brutal work behind America’s agricultural growth.

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#AmericanHistory #IndustrialHistory #AgriculturalHistory #LoggingHistory #StumpPuller #HerculesManufacturing #HomesteadAct #ForestryHistory #FarmHistory #RuralHistory #WestwardExpansion #MinnesotaHistory #IowaHistory #Dynamite #HistoricalMachines #HeavyMachinery #LandClearing #LumberIndustry #USHistory #Kronoset

00:00 Intro
02:49 Why Tree Stumps Became A National Problem
05:19 Grubbing And The Brutal Economics Of Clearing Land
07:41 The Homestead Act And The Stump Crisis
10:28 The Rise Of Stump Puller Invention
12:29 Hercules And The Golden Age Of Stump Pullers
15:59 Steam Power And Industrial Land Clearing
16:35 Dynamite Comes To The Farm
20:10 Pyrotol, Risks, And Environmental Costs
22:15 Bulldozers Replace Stump Pullers
25:02 The Legacy Of The Machines That Cleared America
28:21 Outro

20 Comments

@easyjdier 1 month ago

In early colonial days in Virginia, they simply cut down the trees and farmed around them until they rotted. A few centuries later people used dynamite to just blow the crap out them.
I've grubbed out a few stumps. Hard dirty work. You have to basically dig them up enough to get to the roots holding them so you can cut or saw them somehow. It's complicated.
Nowadays they have stump grinders the just come up and obliterate the friggin' stump, grinding it into chips and shavings. That is a badass machine!

@deepbludude4697 2 months ago

I live in the Ozarks I have stumps still on my property massive ones that aint rotted yet. I can spend all day trying to get stumps out and I have chain saws, a small 28HP tractor, its ass busting work. I cant imagine how the settlers did it by hand using mattocks, axes, buck saws, dynamite and some jack asses. It truly boggles my mind. Those people were so resourceful and hard working.

@BigWorm10-4 1 month ago

I was trying to explain this to my nephew one day we was going through heading from Cincinnati to Columbus Ohio people can't realize how much magnitude or how much time and manpower it took to clear all that land

@grottofrog2978 1 month ago

My mom used to tell me stories of her and my grandmother riding 50 miles one way in an old truck to pick up dynamite for grandpa to blow stumps

@socalpat2000 4 months ago

The most astonishing thing were those carts that magically rolled through the railroad tracks, and the machines with gears and pulleys turning without anything powering them, with the guys hand testing on the gears.

@FreDiamont 2 weeks ago

It is amazing how much the world has changed in such a short time.

@donlowe7093 2 months ago

We have one of those stump pullers in our local Vintage Machinery Club. Not too many old timers recall pulling stumps but there are a couple of us remember using 8 % stumping powder in 10 inches. by 1 1/2 inch. We used a heavy bar to make holes under the stump,and tamped the dynamite in with dirt to get the energy to lift the stump. A few years later we used 60% Geogel for energy source in siesmograph exploration.

@MitchEllis-u4o 1 month ago

Fascinating to consider the scope and breadth of the stumpy areas that had to be cleared and finally a machine steadily progressing toward the ultimate stumper the crawler dozer pushing up stumps at such a rate that would not have been imagined only years before. Learned a lot from this video that I had never thought about the shear scale of the problem that faced farmers

@BigWorm10-4 1 month ago

We do excavating for a living my dad used to talk about when they use Dynamite to blow out rock and stuff and you buy it at the hardware store

@stevenobrien3722 3 months ago (edited)

The math ain’t mathin. They claim they pulled 1,261 stumps in 9 days with the machine. That’s 1 stump every 3.4 minutes. Nope. Never happened.

@Truth-mk-s2k 1 month ago

The Erie Canal used wooden stump pullers that were highly effective

@robertsastro 1 month ago

Thank you for this video.

@ThomasBranaman 3 months ago

Great way to talk about our past

@rickstephens1130 4 months ago (edited)

I wonder if any of those stump pullers are still exist anywhere?
I would love to get my hands on one of those things! I'm pretty creative and I could find a use for it. I'm a retired tree climber and logger of 45 plus years. And fruit trees and shrubs pruning expert. I used to have a great clientele base. I can find a lot of uses for a stump puller. Actually I just wanted to restore it to working condition and use it for kind of a mascot for the tree business. And display it on the side of the truck and on business cards. Along with other tooling items that are in use. Now someone is going to see this and use the idea themselves. Because it's a good idea.

@anneh2375 2 months ago

Amazing documentary 🎉

@richardross7219 3 months ago

The farmers in Connecticut built stump pullers from sections of large tree trunks in the 1600s. Stump pullers with 30' diameter wheels were used to build the Erie Canal over 210 years ago. Do your research.

@ContantContact 1 month ago

In the 1960s dynamite (20%) was still being used where I lived. But not for stumps so much as for giant rocks in a otherwise large field of black dirt. Sometimes a plow would bump one, and digging around it to get it out would reveal it was too big to move.
The local lumberyard sold it by the box, and just a few sticks would make gravel out of the rock, or at leas enough of it to clear the way for the plows. It was pretty cheap then for a box of it. The lumberyard is still in business, but I am sure they don't sell the dynamite anymore.
I know, because I was there. But now, all my friends aware of it have died, or otherwise lost contact.

@joaquincavassaura7493 2 months ago (edited)

Mi bisabuelo se dedicaba a vender leña era carretero , tenia animales de tiro y carretas .
se llevava a los hijos y sacaba los tocones y los críos se metían en los agujeros y se tapaban con una manta por el frio y para descansar en medio de los campos , eso me contaba mi tío abuelo que era el mas pequeño de los 4 hermanos .

@grost7176 1 month ago

I went down through some of the comments. As far as I went through the comments, nobody said anything about burning them... I burnt quite a few they lasted all summer. They burned all summer. Just drilling holes and filling them with fuel.