[2] Logging historians, such as Stewart Holbrook, Robert Pike, and others, have called him "the last lumberjack"[3][4][5] of the old-fashioned type who "cut a swath of timber from Maine to Oregon" and "yelled like crazy devils every spring when they pounded the bars in Bangor, Saginaw, St. Paul, and Seattle".

According to legend, when Jigger was born he came out of his mother's womb with a wad of tobacco in his lip, caulk boots on his feet, and a peavey in one hand and an axe in the other.

[10] Jigger's duties as cookee required him to help the cook prepare food, serve the loggers their meals, clean the dishes after mealtime, and to chop fire wood during any spare time.

[13] The other loggers were so impressed that a young boy would even attempt to take on a fully grown man that they all combined a portion of their wages and bought the Jigger a can of chewing tobacco.

"[3] The young Jigger soon worked his way up the ranks in the woods—swamping roads, tending landing, and chopping, to eventually emerge at the age of 20 as head chopper in charge of a logging camp somewhere on the Androscoggin River.

They said that the Jigger was an unusually good logger and that he could fell a tree uphill, downhill, with or against the wind, even so that upon falling it would drive a stake previously set in the ground.

[19] He would walk into saloons at Berlin, New Hampshire, and Sherbrooke, Quebec, and could convince drunken loggers to work for him driving logs down the most dangerous parts of the Connecticut River.

On one occasion during a river drive, Jigger told his men to wait at camp while he went to recruit more log drivers in West Stewartstown, New Hampshire.

[22] When Jigger finally let up, he proceeded to jump into the air and grabbed a hold of a kerosene lamp from the ceiling and smashed it over the bouncer's head.

Shortly after the end of his logging career, Jigger Johnson found a profession as a fire warden for the United States Forest Service and was stationed at their lookout tower on Mount Chocorua, and later at Carter Dome.

[32] After the Forest Service was forced to let him go due to his drinking, Johnson was hired to man a privately owned fire tower on Bald Mountain in Maine.

[36] As a trapper, Johnson was known to have been somewhat of a one-man Hudson's Bay Company, catching lynx, bobcat, mink, muskrat, weasel, fox, and fisher, often alive and with nothing but his own hands.

The next morning, after realizing he had not checked his traps in over 24 hours (as state laws required), Johnson hired a man to drive him back to Passaconaway.

[39] Following his death, Jigger Johnson was made famous by writers, such as Stewart Holbrook and Robert Pike, for his extraordinary intuition, tolerance to cold weather, ability to consume massive amounts of any proof alcohol, and his enormous strength.