34^ 



HARDWOOD RECORD 





SNAKING THE 



I I ■ SKIUWAY 



beautiful and perfectly lormed boles ami massy tops, until they 

 not only exceed the height of the other trees, but are conspicu- 

 ous for their large size. The best type of poplar, the veteran of 

 the forest, is often from four hundred to seven hundred and fiftj' 

 years old. 



From the location of growth in the deep recesses of the moun- 

 tains, and the difficult}' of hauling large logs, or lumber made on 

 portable mills, to lines of transportation, the total product is 

 not comparable in quantity to woods like white pine, yellow pine, 

 some of the Pacific coast forest products, or other varieties grow- 

 ing in a comprehensive way. Very often every tree has to have a 

 separate trail swamped out for the logs. Therefore poplar log- 

 ging operations are very expensive, and the cost of the lumber 

 is comparatively high. 



The estimation and value of poplar lumber has induced heroic 

 efforts on the part of lumbermen to secure it, with the result 

 that many mountain forest areas have been largely denuded of 

 the growth. It is only jn exceptional localities, where the trans 

 portation of logs and lumber, at present, is a physical impossi- 

 bility, that any considerable quantity remains uncut. It is an- 

 ticipated that during the next ten years essentially all of the pop 

 lar producing country will be denuded, and after that the wood of 

 this variety that reaches the market will be small in quantity. 



The last grand stand of poplar timber, in anything like com- 



prehensive growth (and here it grows intermingled with whita 

 oak) to the extent of perhaj^s twenty per cent of the forest, is in 

 eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, east Tennessee and western 

 North Carolina and in Virginia, at the headwaters of the Big 

 Sandy river, which flows into the Ohio at Catlettsburg, Ky. For 

 more than thirty years this stream has had the reputation of sup- 

 plying from its watersheds the highest type of yellow poplar, and 

 the remainder standing in its upper reaches exists owing to the 

 physical difficulties of the transporting of logs to floating water 

 in the lower stream, which for years were deemed insurmount- 

 able. 



The upper Big Sandy river breaks through the Cumberland 

 mountains, and runs at the bottom of a stupendous gorge often not 

 more than one hundred and fifty feet in width, with embattling 

 cliffs that rise in places in a sheer wall more than a thousand 

 feet from the water. This gorge is tortuous, and the river bottom 

 is strewn with immense rock masses and boulders. For years 

 attempts were made to "run" the Breaks of the Big Sandy, but 

 the}' were abortive, as the logs were ' ' hung up ' ' in jams or were 

 broken and ground to pieces from their impact with the rock walls 

 and boulder-strewn course of the river. 



Recently an enterprising lumber company, which has manu- 

 factured poplar lumber for many years on the Ohio river, and 

 which was the owner of a tract of virgin timber on the upper 

 Big Sandy, conceived the idea of "splash-damming ", the poplar 

 logs through the gorge to rafting, water below it. Splash-dam- 

 ming is not new in mountain logging operations. For years small 

 dams of logs have been built in minor streams, and by taking 

 advantage of the spring and fall tides, logs have been driven 

 out to the larger streams where they could be floated. However, 

 splash-damming the Breaks of the Big Sandy was a stupendous 

 proposition in dam building, when it is considered that the term- 

 inus of the last mile of railroad penetrating the country, was 

 more than twenty miles distant, and the only way of getting 

 materials to the proposed dam site was across two mountain 

 ranges on cattle trails. 



In this region were a hundred million feet of splendid poplar 

 timber, which if converted into lumber, meant a value of more 

 than three millions of dollars. The profit in this enterprise was 

 the prize sought. 



The suggeftion that the author would be a welcome guest at the 

 logging camps in this reniote mountain region, and would have 

 the opportunity of witnessing the initiation of the big concrete 



THE BIGGEST LOG DU.Ml' IN THE IIISTOKY OF YELLOW POI'LAR LUMBEItlNCi. LOCATED IN RUSSELL I'OItK OE BIG SANDY ItlVEU 

 IN DICKINSON COUNTY, VA. ABOUT ONE MILE ABOVE THE "BIJEAKS OF SANDY." 



THIS DUMP IS TWO-THIRDS OF A MILE LONG AND 50 FEET DEEP, CONTAINS 36,000 LARGE VIRGIN FOREST YELLOW POPLAR 

 LOGS : TOTAL LOG SCALE 27.000,000 FEET. 



