24 



5a^\nlills at Fairbanks, the a ritor was informed that it was regularly 

 sold at $225 per thousand feet AVhat it wouKl be worth if it had to 

 be imported can scarcely be magined. While the forests appear to 

 the pioneer of the present to be an impediment to progress, their 

 value will be increasingly api)reciated as the country settles and years 

 pass. It is the forests of the interior that have the greater value and 

 should receive the most fostering care. Enormous areas of timber 

 in that region are annually destroyed by forest fires, to say nothing 

 of that consumed for steamer fuel and other legitimate purposes. 

 Coming generations will sorely miss this timber. It can not be 

 replaced. Growth is slow in those latitudes. If the indiscriminate 

 destruction is not stopped, or at least regulated, and existing forests 

 jealously guarded, development must suffer and be retarded, if not 

 made impossible. In the timber belt of the coast region there is 

 but little danger from forest fires. The rains are an efficient pre- 

 ventive. And the forest-clad gorges and mountain sides in that 

 i-egion are, as a rule, so inaccessible that the timber does not readily 

 fall a prey to the woodman's ax. Nature herself protects the forests 

 there. In the interior they are open to every sort of destruction and 

 their loss will be grievously felt. 



The spruce {Picea alba) is the dominating tree. It covers prac- 

 tically all the best land; only the swamps and steeper hillsides and 

 the tops of the hills are void of it. Intermixed with the spruce is 

 a liberal sprinkling of birch and cottonwood, especially on the higher 

 ground. The timber is not large. In the Tanana Valley spruce 

 ranges in size all the way from mere saplings to trees which measure 

 18 to 20 inches in diameter. Logs from 12 to 15 inches in diameter 

 are abundant. On the basis of $100 per thousand feet, the stumpage 

 in the Tanana Valley is worth all the Government paid for the 

 whole Territory. It is an invaluable asset. The building of towns 

 and the operations of placer mining w^ould be well-nigh impossible in 

 the absence of timber. It is being utilized. At Fairbanks the writer 

 found three sawmills in constant operation, sawing an average of 

 30,000 feet of lumber a day. The question arises if it would not be 

 wise for the Government to make forest reservations in the interior 

 also, with a view to preserving a portion, at least, of this timber 

 for the use of future generations. After a somewhat careful study of 

 the situation, the writer ventures the opinion that what is needed is 

 supervision to avoid waste, rather than withdrawal from use. The 

 waste is not so much from destructive lumbering as it is from ravages 

 by fire. Fires are of frequent occurrence, and with the influx of pros- 

 pectors and settlers their frequency wdll increase unless the Govern- 

 ment takes active measures to prevent them. Lumber is indis- 

 pensable to the development of the country, and, if reservations 



