402 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



Moreover, Ouderkirk's mill is inadequate for the purpose of lumbering the whole tract. It is not 

 adapted to the manufacture of pulp wood, and is used mainly for the purpose of getting out fiddle 

 butts and piano sounding-boards, as to which there is a very limited market, and the logs from 

 which fiddle butts and sounding-boards are cut can not be floated to market. 



Moreover, the Ouderkirk mill could not be used for the purpose of manufacturing the logs from 

 the north side of the Beaver River. We have already seen that by reason of the water being drawn 

 down in the winter time that the ice upon the reservoir is not stable enough to draw logs across. 

 Upon the subject of taking logs from the north of the reservoir to the railroad the learned Attorney- 

 General pursued a line of investigation with results as follows : 



1st. If the logs were floated down to the reservoir, it would be necessary to have steam jack works 

 to take the logs out of the water, which would be expensive. 



2nd. There would be a haul of all such logs after taking them o\)t of the water of five miles 

 to railroad. 



3rd. The expense of taking them out of the water would be sixty cents per thousand feet. 



4th. With the watergoing up and down in the reservoir as used by the State, there would be 

 nothing stable to adjust jack works to for hoisting logs. What to-day would be a mill-pond, would 

 next week be the dry basin of a reservoir. 



(/'. ) Location of mill. 



In order to lumber the claimant's tract by rail, it would be necessary to erect a mill at some point 

 upon the Beaver River, as low down as possible, at or below the mouth of the Red Horse Chain, so 

 that one mill would answer for the entire tract (except the Twitchell Lake country), and at that place 

 to put in a dam or boom across the Beaver River for holding logs, and then to float the logs down the 

 tributaries and river to the mill and there convert them into lumber and by means of a branch track 

 from the mill to the railroad ship out the manufactured product. 



HON. WESLEY BARNES testified that with the reservoir the lands on the Red Horse Chain 

 (north of reservoir) could not be lumbered by rail unless a branch track was built five or six miles 

 long ; that if the dam had not been raised, claimant's entire tract, except the Twitchell Creek country, 

 could have been lumbered by rail by building a mill on the river near the outlet of the Red Horse 

 Chain, and then build a branch road down, then float the logs down to the mill, and manufacture 

 them into lumber. 



(r.) Cost of mill. 



Any kind of a mill adequate for the tract of land would cost at least $25,000. 



AUGUSTUS KESSLER testified: 



Q. You have had experience in building saw mills, have you not ? — A. Yes, sir. 



Q. Now, to properly lumber a tract of 60,000 acres of land, what would be the reasonable cost of 

 a mill? — A. The only way I could explain it would be what my mill cuts in a year. 



O. Your mill cuts eight or ten million feet? — A. Ten million feet in a season. The mill would 

 cost $25,000. 



(d.) Cost of braiiih track. 



The six miles of necessary branch track would cost $60,000 at least. 



HERSCHEL ROBERTS, the Deputy State Engineer and Surveyor, testified that to build a branch 

 track in that locality, ballasted so as to carry a locomotive, would cost from ten to twelve thousand 

 dollars a mile, and there are about six miles of branch track to be built. (Testimony, Hon. Wesley 

 Barnes.) 



After building the mill and branch track, there is still a freight rate of sixty cents more per thousand 

 feet to be paid in order to market the product by rail than the cost of transportation when marketing 

 by water, which at 3,000 feet per acre would make it $1 18,504.80 for transportation alone more ex- 

 pensive to lumber claimant's entire tract by rail than by water, after building the mill and branch 

 tracks at an additional cost of $85,000, not taking into account the forty cents per thousand feet of 

 lighterage testified to by Mr. Kessler. It would be considerably over $200,000 more expensive to 

 lumber (manufactured product) by rail than to float out the logs. 



