HARDWOOD RECORD 



15 



NEW DOUBLE BAND AND RESAW MILL, 

 CO., INC., ASHLAND, 



VANSANT, 

 KY. 



KITCHEN & 



PART OF THE PLANT. THE KENOVA POPLAR MANUFACTURING 

 COMPANY, KENOVA, \V. YA. 



ji. s h I a n d Poplar District. 



Between Gallipolis and Portsmouth, 0., 

 the Ohio river makes a great southern bend, 

 making a peninsula of Gallia, Lawrence and 

 Sciota counties. Near the most southern 

 curve of this great bend of the river is a 

 group of towns, of which Ashland, Ky., is 

 the commercial center, which have for more 

 than half a century been noted for the pro- 

 duction of yellow poplar lumber. These 

 sawmill towns comprise Ironton and Coal 

 Grove, O., Ashland and Catlettsburg, Ky., 

 Kenova, Huntington and Guyandotte, W. 

 Va. It is at this point that the three 

 great states of Ohio, Kentucky and West 

 Virginia come together. At Catlettsburg, 

 the Big Sandy river, which is the boundary 

 line between West Virginia and Kentucky, 

 flows into the Ohio, and at Guyandotte the 

 Guyandotte river reaches that stream. Many 

 other streams penetrating West Virginia 

 have furnished in the past a large quota 

 of logs for the mills of the Ashland district, 

 but the chief source of supply and the sup- 

 ply that obtains to this day, comes from 

 the Big Sandy and from the Guyandotte. 

 For manv vears the lower reaches of these 



rivers supplied the poplar timber that was 

 converted into lumber at the milling points 

 along the Ohio, but now the supply is ob- 

 tained from the headwaters of the rivers 

 even at a distance of from 100 to nearly 

 200 miles from Ashland, and the timber 

 supply comes from the mountainous regions 

 of eastern Kentucky, southwestern West Vir- 

 ginia and the extreme western counties of 

 old Virginia. 



This timber producing section, rich in 

 poplar, oak and some minor hardwoods, is 

 distinctly a river logging proposition. Thus 

 far only to a limited extent have these 

 mountain sections been penetrated by rail- 

 reads, and indeed in the poplar growing dis- 

 tricts enumerated, railroad building is well 

 nigh an impossibility, at least from a com- 

 mercial standpoint. Every creek and cove 

 along these rivers has been or is being 

 stripped of its forest wealth, and latterly 

 by means of tram roads it has been delivered 

 to the tributaries of the rivers by means of 

 splash dams, worked out in the main 

 streams, and eventually floated to the Ohio. 

 A large portion of the logs thus delivered 



at the Ohio river has been converted into 

 lumber at the mills near their mouths, but 

 still a large quantity is floated further down 

 and is sawed at Cincinnati, Newport, Cov- 

 ington, Louisville and other points. In 

 times past the logs from the lower reaches 

 of the Big Sandy and Guyandotte were 

 readily floated down within fifty miles of 

 Ashland, and then made up into rafts and 

 "brails" and delivered to the mills with 

 regularity, spring after spring. As opera- 

 tions penetrated further toward the sources 

 of these streams, a single season's "tide" 

 has rarely been able to deliver the logs to 

 the sawmills. The utilization of the tide 

 of one season might bring the great mass of 

 logs down stream fifty miles, when it would 

 be hung up for lack of water. Another sea- 

 son 's tides might bring the logs fifty or 

 seventy-five miles further down stream, 

 where the first year's stock laid the year 

 before. Thus it has come about that clean 

 runs of poplar logs from the extreme head- 

 waters of the rivers named, have become a 

 physical impossibility in a single year, and 

 therefore the average stock of poplar on 



SPECIMEN RAFT POTLAR LOGS. W. H. HAWKINS LUMBER COM- 

 PANY. ASHLAND. KY. 



THICK ''LEAK POPLAR, W. H. DAWKINS LUMBER COMPANY, 

 ASHLAND, KY. 



