This photograph of a log drive on the Connecticut River shows rafts of horses used to pull apart log jams. Chains were wrapped around the ends of the jammed logs and then attached to the horses, who would wade into the river up to their bellies and pull the logs loose. Rafts transported the horses from place to place as needed.  Until the arrival of the railroad to this area in the 1860s, the Connecticut River provided the cheapest and most direct means of transporting lumber from  forests in northern New England to increasingly deforested southern New England towns.