364 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



ties in the State of Ohio. These con- 

 stitute an area about twenty-five miles 

 wide and one hundred eio^hty miles 

 long, extending from the Ohio River to 

 the latitude of Lake Erie. Practically 

 all of this area lies in the range of 

 graphical activity, and morainic fea- 

 tures are conspicuous throughout. The 



»6 



1890 



1895 



1900 



1905 1907 



♦ s- 



»3- 



»2- 



»i- 



Plastering lath 

 Cedar Bhinglee 

 ■ Poplar Bldine 

 • s P flooring 

 • HemlooK frame 



TZ^.- 



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Qraph chart of retail prioee of 

 lunber in western Ohio. 



southern portion, to a little above the 

 middle of Darke County, is a rolling, 

 low hill country, while the northern 

 portion is quite flat. The prevailing 

 soil of the southern portion is a rich 

 red clay, except in the narrow stream 

 valleys, which are made up of a heavy 

 black loam of remarkable fertility. In 

 the northern part the soil is somewhat 

 less fertile, consisting in part of sand, 

 and elsewhere of white clay, which re- 

 quires expensive drainage to yield the 

 best results for agriculture. The lowest 

 part of the section is, of course, along 

 the Ohio River, where the elevation is 

 about five hundred feet above sea level. 

 Darke County is the highest part, prac- 

 tically all of it being somewhat more 

 than one thousand feet above sea level. 

 The prevailing bed-rock is limestone 

 which crops out very generally in the 

 southern part, and is quarried in con- 

 siderable quantities for the manufacture 

 of lime, and, also, to some extent for 

 building stone. The rainfall is fairly 

 uniform over the region, amounting to 

 a little more than forty inches per an- 



num in the northern portion and a little 

 less than that amount in the southern 

 portion. 



The region under consideration con- 

 stitutes a belt through what was at one 

 time probably the finest hardwood for- 

 est in the United States. Here grew, 

 in a high degree of perfection, white 

 and red oak, walnut, hickory, maple, 

 elm, beech, locust, sycamore, wild 

 cherry, cotton wood, poplar, Kentucky 

 coffee-tree and chestnut, not to men- 

 tion several less valuable kinds of trees. 

 The quality of this timber was the very 

 finest throughout the entire belt. 



As in every timber country, the first 

 work of the pioneers in this region was 

 to clear sufificient land in the forest to 

 raise the necessary crops. ]\Iuch of 

 the finest timber was "deadened," or 

 girdled, and when, after two or three 

 seasons it had dried sufficiently, it was 

 felled in great heaps and burned. Only 

 the straightest most perfect sticks of 

 walnut and oak were used in building 

 the log houses and barns. The ster- 

 ling quality of this timber is manifest 

 in the remarkably well preserved log 

 structures still standing in considerable 



A Typical Whitcoak Grove 



numbers throughout the region. The 

 roofs of these buildings were made of 

 clapboards, rived with frow and bee- 

 tle from only the finest sticks of oak, 

 and it was not uncommon for such a 

 roof to last for forty years or more. It 

 often happened that several trees 

 would be cut down before a perfect one 

 was found for the making of clap- 

 boards ; all the others were left to rot 

 where they fell. 



