Swamping

Swamping was the lumberjack term for the falling of small trees and/or the cutting and removal of brush within an area to allow for unobstructed working conditions as well as an escape route when falling trees. It was also used to describe the clearing of brush for roads, cabins, or a camp from which to work. As a descriptive term related to the work of beavers clearing an area of swamp, "swamping" was a simile for the prep work the lumbermen would perform to prepare an area, and the tool used for that was heavy, wide-bladed, but long, double bitted axe intended for clearing brush, small diameter trees, and underbrush. First noted late in the final decades of the 1800s, the pattern seems to have been born out of the lumber industry of the Pacific Northwest.