392 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



saws, operated by water power. Each mill could cut 

 only 1,000 to 3,000 feet, b. m., of lumber, and it would 

 have required five times as many of these sawmills to 

 ]5roduce the million feet, b. m., that a single Minnesota 



Sj*r5;^'**i^»*a«g^jjs^^^^' 



Photograph by "Pine Cone,' 



Minneapolis, Minn. 

 SPRINGTIME ON A MINNESOTA RIVER 



I^ogs of the winter's cut are waiting for t))e floods to carry them into the boom some scores of miles 

 down stream. These smooth pine logs will lose much of their bark during the jams and the 

 bumps of the drive, but the wood will not be injured and such is the material of which high grade 

 luiTiber is made. On the rising ground back of the river shore, the view shows a fine forest of 

 white pine, apparently without a tree gone. Their turn will come next winter. 



transportation, because of the high stumpage value of 

 white pine and the inaccessibility of the remaining tim- 

 ber, was found to be cheaper than water transportation. 

 Thus was lost most of the romance which formerly sur- 

 rounded the progress of white 

 pine logs from the forest to the 

 mill. The old-time "lumberjack" 

 is passing; here and there are 

 still to be found the men that cut 

 and banked the white pine logs 

 all winter, and followed "the 

 drive" in the spring. They loved 

 the pine woods, and as the years 

 went by, they followed the virgin 

 white pine westward from Maine 

 to New York, Pennsylvania, 

 Michigan, Wisconsin and finally 

 to Minnesota. Never has there 

 been a happier, truer-hearted or 

 more whimsical company in our 

 industrial army. With a creed 

 and a code all his own, the lum- 

 berjack of the white pine camp 

 was a product of his environ- 

 ment, and, like the buffalo, the 

 Indian and the white pine, he 

 belongs principally to the "old 

 days." 



sawmillhasbeen credited with be- 

 ing capable of turning out daily. 

 Through the Louisiana pur- 

 chase in 1803, a profitable lum- 

 ber market was opened in New 

 Orleans. This market was sup- 

 plied by rafts of white pine logs 

 floated down the Ohio and Mis- 

 sissippi rivers from Western 

 Pennsylvania and New York. 

 Some white pine was cut in 

 Michigan and Wisconsin prior to 

 1830, but it was not until ten 

 years later that lumbering began 

 in earnest in these States. It was 

 not until about 1875 that white 

 pine logs were cut in Minnesota. 

 In Minnesota and Wisconsin 

 white pine was cut on the 

 streams tributary to the Missis- 

 sippi, and floated to St. Louis 

 and other fast-growing river 



towns, to be turned into lumber, demanded by the rapidly 

 settling prairie region. A little later, the logs were 

 rafted on the Upper Mississippi River and towed to 

 the mills below. In the "old Beef Slough days" 

 13,00,000 feet of white pine logs were rafted in a 

 single day. In a few years sawmills were established 

 nearer the source of the logs and more recently, railroad 



SQUARES FOR WINDOW SHADE ROLLERS 



More than 00,000,000 feet of white pine are annually made into shade and map rollers in the United 

 States. This wood is unsurpassed for that purpose, because of its lightness and its disinclination to 

 warp. High grades only are used. 



The chronicle of white pine lumbering is the familiar 

 history of wasteful methods in days of plenty, with the 

 sequel of efficient utilization forced through increased 

 demand in the face of diminishing supplies. Perhaps 

 one-third of the possible cut of white pine lumber was 

 lost through logs left to rot in the woods because it 

 was not profitable to saw any but the clearest and 



