314 ANNUAL REPORTS UF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



California the increase in the timber-sales business of 1923 over 1922 

 was 145 per cent, and in Oregon and Washington it was 31 per cent. 

 The increase in Alaska was 73 per cent, but this was largely to supply 

 the needs of the Alaskan fisheries and other local industries. 



As a usual thing national forest timber is more remote and less 

 accessible than the privately owned timber, most of which was ac- 

 quired before the creation of the forests. As a consequence, new 

 capital is usually invested in private stumpage in preference to seek- 

 ing that owned by the Government. The greatest call upon national 

 forest resources will come when the bulk of the privately owned 

 timber has been acquired by operating companies. The increase in 

 the sales of stumpage on the national forests during the last year 

 indicates that a considerable portion of the rampart of privately 

 owned timberlands that stands between the national forests and the 

 main-line transportation systems has been so acquired and that the 

 sawmill capital yet to go West will tend more largely to seek national 

 forest stumpage. 



Among the outstanding timber sales of the year was the Bear 

 Valley unit, on the Malheur Forest, in Oregon. It involves 890,- 

 000,000 board feet of timber, chiefly western yellow pine. This tim- 

 ber will bring into the Treasury not less than $2,250,000 in the 20 

 years of the sale. The management plan under which the sale was 

 made contemplates a continuous supply of from 40,000,000 to 60,- 

 000,000 feet annually to one manufacturing center. The capital in- 

 vested in this sale originated in the Lake States in the days of white 

 pine and has moved south and west periodically since. So far as a 

 supply of raw material is concerned, it will never have to move again. 



Another sale of interest, not because of the large amount of timber 

 or its bearing upon agricultural development in the surrounding 

 region, but on account of the values involved, is that on the Burnt 

 Cabin Creek unit, in the Coeur d'Alene Forest, Idaho. This sale 

 covers approximately 3,360 acres on the Little North Fork of the 

 Coeur d'Alene River, and involves the cutting of 70,000,000 feet 

 of western white pine, white fir, Engelmann spruce, Douglas fir, 

 larch, and hemlock, with white pine forming about 80 per cent of the 

 stand. The successful bidder was awarded this timber at a price that 

 will total $630,175. This averages a little better than $9 per thou- 

 sand board feet, which marks a new level of values for western tim- 

 ber. The stumpage price of the white pine alone is $11,40 per thou- 

 sand feet. A feature of the sale is that the purchasers agreed to 

 acquire rights of way where the 10 miles of railroad within the 

 forest crosses private land and to turn these over to the Government 

 at the end of the operation. This will assure the Government an 

 outlet by rail for the large amount of timber that remains on the 

 Coeur d'Alene River. 



Within two decades the bodies of merchantable timber in most of 

 the national forests will be in demand by the lumber and paper 

 industries. To utilize the present stands to best advantage, to cut 

 them so as to assure a new crop of high quality, and to manage the 

 whole development so that the principle of a sustained yield will 

 not be endangered, necessitates technical skill and intensive forestry 



