10 The Mountaineer 
The Olympic National Forest is now and will for all time to come 
be of greatest benefit to the people of this country, and particularly of 
the local communities, in the production of commercial timber. Just 
now, because of the inaccessibility of the vast majority of this timber 
as compared with large holdings of private timber on bordering lands 
nearer tidewater, there is not nearly the activity that there will be in 
the near future, and we are not realizing the benefits which the natural 
current production warrants. A rough extensive reconnaissance of the 
timber resources on this National Forest furnishes an estimate of prac- 
tically 32,600,000,000 feet board measure of merchantable timber (nem- 
lock 39%, Douglas fir 31%, Amabilis and other true firs 16%, cedar 
7%, and spruce 7%) all but six hundred or seven hundred million feet 
of which is considered as within the commercial—now or eventually 
loggable—forest area. This timber is largely mature and overmature, 
the estimate of this class aggregating 29,000,000,000 feet board measure, 
so that there is not at present the amount of annual increment, or 
growth, which we can expect after it becomes economically possible 
to dispose of the larger percentage of the old stands, and to apply 
more closely true silvicultural principles in our forest management. 
It is believed that we can safely figure on eventually obtaining an 
annual growth of at least 300,000,000 feet board measure in the com- 
mercial timber area on this forest, which, with the large amount of 
present mature timber, warrants us in encouraging, just as fast as 
economic conditions permit, the sale, under proper regulations for 
reforestation or continued forest production, of sufficient timber to 
make an average annual cut over short periods of years of between 
250,000,000 and 300,000,00 board feet. 
Even now the timber sale business on the Olympic National Forest 
is sufficiently under way to assure the execution of several contracts 
this winter for the cutting, during periods of from one to seven years, 
of better than 300,000,000 million feet, or an average for the next 
several years of at least 50,000,000 feet per annum. At the present 
annual stumpage price of $1.75 per thousand feet, an annual revenue 
of $87,500 from this source appears certain, 35% of which, or $30,625, 
will be returned from the United States Treasury for school and road 
purposes within the counties affected by this forest withdrawal—Clal- 
lam, Jefferson, Chehalis, and Mason. With the eventual annual cutting 
of at least 300,000,000 feet of timber and lightly increased stumpage 
prices, the financial feature of the present scientific Forest Service 
policy will become much better appreciated. The assured average 
annual revenue for the next four or five years in this one forest is 
already more than three times the total cost of administration, which 
includes all the work of fire and other forest protection, experimental 
planting, the administration of the Act of June 11, 1906, the granting 
of free use of timber to local settlers, the special use business, timber 
