86 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



The lumbering railroad has already 

 been built to within a mile and a half of 

 the simimit of Mt. Mitchell and the 

 large spruce trees which run from 

 twenty inches to twenty-six inches, 

 and sometimes to thirty inches in 

 diameter — the best spruce timber in 

 the eastern United States — are being 

 cut down and hauled to a large band-saw 

 mill at Black Mountain which is lo- 

 cated on the Southern Railway, sixteen 

 miles east of Asheville. The smaller 

 spruce and balsam trees are cut and 

 sent to the Champion Fibre Company's 

 large pulp mills at Canton, which is 

 just eighteen miles west of Asheville. 



Such rapid progress has been made 

 in clearing off the land that Clingman's 

 Peak and a considerable area on Mount 

 Mitchell today present a scene of utter 

 desolation and ruin. Persons familiar 

 with this section of the country realize 

 that the destruction of the forests here 

 is a more serious matter than in almost 

 any other region. Forests cut down on 

 the northwest Pacific coast, for instance, 

 will quickly reproduce themselves, but 

 the destruction of forests in the southern 



Appalachians and the usual burning 

 over of land carries with it also the 

 destruction of the soil and the seed 

 deposits and reproduction becomes al- 

 most an impossibility. 



That which nature required centuries 

 to produce is destroyed by man in a 

 few days because of the immediate 

 profit which skinning the land will 

 bring. The forests in which are the 

 sources of many streams become rocky 

 areas on which the heavy rains fall and 

 rush off creating floods which destroy 

 farms and interfere with the regular 

 flow of the mountain streams, many of 

 which are sources of great waterpower. 



In the Mt. Mitchell lumbering opera- 

 tion the great skidways on which the 

 logs are dragged to the railroad for 

 loading and shipment form great gutters 

 and down these gutters the waters from 

 the rains rush in torrents and cut deep 

 into the soil through to the red clay and 

 the rock. Over the remainder of the 

 face of the denuded mountain, soil 

 washes badly after each rain, and, with 

 its disappearance, the people of the 

 State are losing all hopes of reforestation. 



Mt. Mitchell Inn, Wireless Station and Flagstaff. 



