MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



11 



eventually be considered as the portion of the 

 state which can, to the best advantage, be re- 

 tained in forest. Good timbers are native, the 

 soil is splendidly adapted to the raising of 

 trees, the summers are rather shorter than is 

 generally considered best for farming, the need 

 of timber throughout the state will be press- 

 ing; all points which, taken together, with the 

 fact that our industries depend upon the con- 

 servation and the development of the forests, 

 makes the adoption of practical forestry meth- 

 ods on a large scale nothing less than obli- 

 gatory. 



FORESTRY AT THE SOO. 



Hon. Chase S. Osborne, of Sault Ste. Marie, 

 has presented 2,000 elm trees to that city, and 

 a systematic effort is to be made to make the 

 Soo a "City Beautiful." The trees will be cared 

 for after planting, and as the elm is hardy in 

 that part of the state, making a rapid growth, 

 the present undertaking will without doubt be 

 successful. Two thousand trees distributed about 

 the city will be sufficient to cover a wide area. 

 Taken in connection with the park system of the 

 United States government, the grounds about the 

 county buildings and the improvements to be 

 made on Brady field when the federal building 

 is erected, the effect will be most pleasing. 



TIMBER OWNERS ARE AWAKENING. 



One of the most important economic move- 

 ments of the day, about which the general public 

 has yet learned little, is the concerted action of 

 owners of timber in different parts of the country 

 in organizing associations to protect their hold- 

 ings from fire. In the Pacific northwest, the 

 Washington Forest Fire Association has just 

 elected officers at Seattle and begun work for 

 the year with 3,000,000 acres under its care. The 

 plans include a system of patrol by rangers re- 

 sembling the work done by the United States 

 Forest Service in guarding against and extinguish- 

 ing fires. 



Organizations of similar kind and for a like 

 purpose are at work in Oregon and Idaho. In 

 the latter state, a portion of the expense is borne 

 by taxation and paid from the state treasury. A 

 western railroad company which holds large tracts 

 of timber has taken steps to guard its property 

 from fire, and during the short time that its 

 plans have been in operation it has met with most 

 encouraging success. 



Similar work is being done on the other side 

 of the continent. Forest owners in Maine have 

 gone to work in the same systematic way to 

 control the forests' great enemy, fire. Like or- 

 ganizations are found in other parts of the coun- 

 try, showing how fully it is now realized that 

 protection against fire is of the greatest im- 

 portance. 



It is safe to 'say that fires in this country 

 have destroyed more timber than lumbermen have 

 'cut. When timber was abundant, the waste passed 

 almost unnoticed, but now that a scarcity is at 

 hand and an actual wood famine threatens in 

 the near future, the owners of forest lands are 

 waking up and taking action to save what is 

 left. 



FORESTRY NOTES. 



Twenty thousand trees, embracing over twenty 

 varieties, from the state forestry commission at 

 Roscommon, have been planted in Grand Haven's 

 new park, Dewey Hill park, across the river 

 from the city. The park includes a great sand 

 mountain known as Dewey Hill, familiar to trav- 

 elers from all sections of Michigan. Prof. Roth 

 and the members of the forestry commission in- 

 tend to plant trees on all the bare sand dunes 

 in the vicinity of Grand Haven. 



Prof. W. E. Praeger, of Kalamazoo College, 

 gave an interesting talk before the Ladies' Li- 

 brary association of Kalamazoo on "Forests ana 

 of What They Consist." Prof. Praeger in his 

 study of trees in Kalamazoo has found several 

 which are 150 vears old. 



REFORESTATION OF 



VITAL IMPORTANCE 



The question of retimbering a large portion 

 of our devastated forest lands is of most vital 

 importance. As I hark back to my first com- 

 ing to this state, in 1853, I clearly remember 

 how deeply I was impressed with the glorious 

 wealth of timber, and how amazed I was over 

 its reckless waste. Countless millions of hard- 

 wood timber was cut and burned, that stand- 

 ing today, would be worth several times more 

 than the land it then occupied. The vast for- 

 ests of white pine were popularly considered 

 inexhaustible. He who voiced any doubt of 

 this was ridiculed and thought unduly pessi- 

 mistic; and with the lumbermen it was only a 

 question of how rapidly they could strip these 

 wondrous pine forests. If I remember rightly, 

 the output of the Saginaw river for a single 

 year once exceeded four billion feet of pine 

 lumber. 



I well remember one year seeing the Titti- 

 bawassee river jammed full of logs for sixty- 

 five miles of its course. The Saginaw and 

 its tributaries represent only one-eleventh of 

 the area of this splendid state. 



The writer was thought pessimistic in these 

 early days, but the end has come much sooner 

 than even I then dreamed. 



In the popular mind, the great length of 

 time requisite for effective timber growth ser- 

 iously handicaps the work of the reforestry 

 advocate; but when the public can be shown 

 the simple truth, the wonderful results in other 

 parts of our country not, strictly speaking, in 

 reforestry, but in quickly growing forests on 

 treeless wastes, where forests never grew be- 

 fore the people of our splendid state will 

 have faith and come to the rescue of the for- 

 estry commission. 



The writer's first instructive lesson in this 

 field came during a ten-months' stay in South. 

 Dakota in 1898. Three miles west of Sfbux 

 Falls lives a pioneer farmer who is popularly 

 called "Corn Jones." He has a large farm, 

 and grows much corn. I. visited Mr. Corn 

 Jones and was at once impressed with the 

 surprising, and peculiar, growth of timber I 

 found there. In this part of Dakota there are 

 no trees, save those planted by man, except a 

 slight fringe along the streams. I found this 

 Jones farm divided in fields of perhaps thirty 

 acres each, by six rows of trees planted ten 

 feet apart each way. Three of these rows 

 were two feet to thirty inches in diameter and 

 fifty feet to the first limbs; the other three 

 rows, about half this size. I asked Mr. Jones 

 for particulars. He said: "I planted the first 

 three rows for wind breaks, and when they 

 became the size of these smaller rows it 

 occurred to me that they would soon be large 

 enough for lumber and firewood, and I 

 planted these three other rows; and for sev- 

 eral years now I have been cutting lumber and 

 wood from the larger rows. I take several 

 hundred cords of wood into the city each year, 

 and that timber is paying me twenty-fold more 

 per acre than any other acres of my farm." 

 These trees are cottonwoods. 



During this visit to Dakota, I was deeply 

 impressed with the study of the situation from 



a climatic point of view, and could there see 

 clearly demonstrated the climatic influence of 

 forests or rather lack of forests. The "Da- 

 kota blizzard" is a household word all through 

 our country, and I went into the winter there 

 with some dread. But a study of the govern- 

 ment weather records showed that the mean 

 and maximum wind velocities of the Dakotas 

 are not so high as in our Michigan. But on 

 those treeless plains the free sweep of a mod- 

 erate wind, in a cold snowstorm, may well be 

 termed a blizzard. 



The following incident has emphasized the 

 terror this Dakota blizzard. A country school- 

 teacher dismissed her school one mild winter 

 afternoon and her seventeen young children 

 started for home, the snow falling slightly. 

 Almost instantly it turned very cold, the snow 

 increased, and the wind became very high, the 

 snow sheet blinded the children and, losing 

 their way, every one perished. 



Another teacher in a neighboring district 

 dismissed her seven little pupils, but went with 

 them, was caught in the snowstorm, but she so 

 carefully brooded her little ones, almost en- 

 tirely divesting herself of clothing to wrap 

 them up, as to get them all safely home, but 

 almost losing her own life; indeed, she never 

 did fully recover. A noble-hearted New Eng- 

 land gentleman, learning of the heroism of this 

 noble girl, sent her $10,000 in gold as a tribute 

 to her heroic act. 



W. R. COATS. 



IOSCO FOREST SCHOOL POSTPONED. 



Owing to the opinion of Attorney-General Bird, 

 of Michigan, that the state board of agriculture 

 has no authority to send money from its funds 

 away from the college, the work of reforestation 

 of the 30,000-acre tract in losco county has been 

 postponed for at least one year. When the legis- 

 lature convenes a bill asking for authority to 

 use part of the state board funds will be pro- 

 posed and a special appropriation will probably 

 be asked for. 



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C. R. Lansberry, of the Thayer Lumber 

 Company at Muskegon, has formed a com- 

 pany for the purpose of manufacturing staves 

 and barrels. The new company will employ 

 fifty men at the outset. 



S. F. Derry's saw mill at Ocqueoc has re- 

 sumed operations, as has Tolfree & Barthol- 

 omew's shingle mill at West Branch. 



