Improvement Systems Cost 239 



times the Indians located and used lookout points. They also 

 found and used a few good camp sites. 



Following the Indian's trails, came the trappers. Their im- 

 provements were usually very scant — a few poor trails, ending 

 blindly at little cabins, and a few blazed snow-shoe trails, the 

 discovery of the streams open for canoe travel. Through the 

 North and West, the prospector followed the trapper. First, 

 the placer miner and later, the lode miner. The placer miner 

 left little behind him save a few trails and tumble-down shacks. 

 The lode miner built many miles of good roads. He knew him- 

 self to be a fixture in the country, and that transportation was 

 of as much importance to him as good ore. He had visions of 

 stamp-mills with heavy machinery, needs for roads to haul ore 

 and concentrates out to the smelter, railroads. Success for him 

 involved great expenditures in improvements. From the pros- 

 pector and miner the forester usually inherits many miles of 

 good and poor roads and trails, some deserted cabins, and a criss- 

 cross of blazed lines. These blazes are always confusing and, 

 where they mark "live" prospects or patented lands, always in- 

 volve much work. 



As the mineral resources are developed, agricultural and graz- 

 ing resources are also developed. New roads and trails and new 

 lines of blazes go into the timber. At about this stage, it is likely 

 that the Public Land Survey comes in. This is a permanent 

 improvement of great value to the forester, but, usually, it brings 

 with it a train of characteristic troubles. Where the Survey was 

 utilized to permit the "homesteading" of heavy timber, the sem- 

 blance of residence and development often produced a network of 

 short roads and trails which, even though poor, did open up 

 the country as never before. With the coming of patents to the 

 land and the following concentration in ownership, wholesale 

 desertion of the country often followed, with the consequent rapid 

 closing of roads and trails. 



Where the Survey has been followed by patents and later by 

 lumbering operations, the country fills with slash ; slash-fires 

 largely destroy the survey lines and monuments ; roads and 

 camps put in principally to facilitate logging, are deserted ; scat- 

 tering settlements develop here and there, maintaining a feeble 

 connection with the "outside" and put to it to maintain them- 



