3 20 



Yearbook^ of Agriculture 1949 



Paper birch, the boxelder, cottonwood, 

 aspen, ironwood, and bur oak. 



The spruce grows in the higher alti- 

 tudes on the northern and western 

 slopes and in the draws and gulches. A 

 narrow stringer of grassland lies in the 

 gulch bottoms. The remainder of the 

 forest is the natural site for the pine. 



Wherever seed trees exist, natural 

 reproduction does occur rapidly and 

 surely; planting and seeding are neces- 

 sary only in places where fire com- 

 pletely killed the stand. The young 

 growth invariably comes in so thick 

 that it is called dog-hair stands, and 

 must be thinned to relieve the over- 

 crowded condition. Up to 1948, 266,- 

 000 acres had been thinned. 



IN SETTLEMENT AND USE, the Black 

 Hills area is new country. It was con- 

 sidered to be Sioux Indian land until 

 the gold stampede to the southern hills 

 began in 1875. Agitation followed to 

 open the area to settlers. On February 

 28, 1877, President Grant signed an 

 act that excluded the Black Hills from 

 the Indian reservation and legally 

 opened the country. Settlement and 

 mining activities had already started, 

 however, and most of the camps and 

 towns were established by 1876. 



Unregulated cutting of the timber 

 started at once to provide material for 

 buildings and mines at Lead, Dead- 

 wood, Rochford, Carbonate, Mystic, 

 Galena, Sturgis, and Rapid City. Port- 

 able sawmills operated at most of these 

 places, and a string of them extended 

 along the eastern side of the forest from 

 Sturgis to Black Hawk. Cutting was 

 also done on Rapid Creek to supply 

 Rapid City. 



At first, utilization of the forest was 

 poor. Little action was taken to pre- 

 vent forest fires until a series of large 

 fires convinced settlers and miners that 

 the timber supply would have to be 

 more wisely used. Utilization began to 

 be somewhat closer, probably because 

 within the decade a large demand had 

 developed for mine timbers, ties, fuel, 

 and for lumber and heavy timbers. 



No consideration was given then to 



the future of the resource, however, 

 and clear cutting was the rule until 

 about the turn of the century. 



By 1897, enough of the residents 

 realized that better care of the timber- 

 lands was necessary to assure adequate 

 future supplies of timber and forage, 

 and they petitioned the Government 

 to make a forest reserve of the area. In 

 1897, President Cleveland withdrew 

 all land in the Black Hills from entry; 

 on September 19, 1898, the Black Hills 

 Forest Reserve was placed under ad- 

 ministration. It was later divided into 

 two units for administrative purposes 

 and renamed the Black Hills National 

 Forest and Harney National Forest. 



Applications to purchase timber 

 were received by the supervisor almost 

 immediately. The first one was from 

 the Homestake Mining Company, 

 which for some time had been cutting 

 timber in this area. The resulting sale, 

 the first one made on any national 

 forest in the United States, is familiarly 

 known as Case 1. The company has 

 continued to be a heavy purchaser of 

 national forest timber. 



The conditions of sale and cutting 

 for Case 1, compared with those now 

 in effect, are of historic interest, as 

 showing the initial step in the develop- 

 ing of silvicultural practices on the 

 forest. 



Offered in Case 1 were 15,519,300 

 board feet of saw timber and 5,100 

 cords of wood from the tops of live 

 trees, at a minimum of $1 a thousand 

 board feet and 25 cents for a cord. 

 Standing dead timber was offered for 

 50 cents a thousand feet and down 

 dead timber for 15 cents a cord. The 

 timber to be sold was called Norway 

 pine but was actually ponderosa pine. 

 In comparison, the advertised mini- 

 mum stumpage price in the same local- 

 ity had increased in 1948, in one case 

 at least, to $17.37 a thousand board 

 feet. 



Eight contracts were let for the eight 

 sections of land comprising the sale 

 area. Cutting started at Christmas in 

 1899. Cutting the first year was to a 

 strict 8-inch-diameter limit, which pro- 



