Forestry in the Elac\ Hills 



321 



duced an average of about 5,000 board 

 feet an acre. Later, at the request of 

 the Forest Service, the method of cut- 

 ting was modified so that not more 

 than two of the larger trees were left 

 on an acre for seed trees. One of the 

 requirements of the contract was that 

 the slash be piled by the operator after 

 all tops had been made into cordwood. 

 In general, however, the slash was 

 poorly piled; on the less accessible 

 places, where the cordwood was hard 

 to get out, the purchaser's contractors 

 followed the practice of covering the 

 trimmed tops with slash. 



Before the cutting was completed 

 and the case closed in April 1908, four 

 extensions of time had been granted. 

 The total cut was less than the esti- 

 mated volume by almost a million 

 board feet, but, because of the removal 

 of practically all of the reserve stand, 

 the area will not be ready for a second 

 cut for many more years. 



A survey showed that actually an 

 average stand of only 482 board feet 

 had been left per acre when the cut 

 was made. In 1924, the average stand 

 per acre had increased to 2,611 board 

 feet. This indicates how rapidly the 

 volume increases when heavy cuttings 

 are made, but is no argument for cut- 

 ting as heavy as that originally done in 

 the Case 1 area. 



When the forest was established, it 

 was thought that local demands would 

 be sufficient to use the entire allow- 

 able cut. In the beginning, the lumber- 

 ing and timber industry grew at the 

 same rate as the mining industry de- 

 veloped. Actually, for many years, the 

 size of the timber industry was lim- 

 ited by local demand. 



The Homestake Mine is still the 

 largest single user of local timber on 

 the Black Hills National Forest. The 

 company has purchased large holdings 

 of timberland that were in private own- 

 ership to supplement timber available 

 to them from the national forest. 



Railroads also used a great deal of 

 the Black Hills timber. The agricul- 

 tural areas surrounding the national 

 forest developed at about the same 



rate as the mining industry, which pro- 

 vided a market for the agricultural 

 products; farmers, too, were users of 

 the products of the timber. 



A sawmill, now known as the War- 

 ren Lamb Mill, was established in 

 Rapid City in 1907. The expanding 

 lumber industry needed outside mar- 

 kets to absorb the production that ex- 

 ceeded local needs, but the ban on 

 interstate shipping of any except fire- 

 or insect-killed timber restricted the 

 growth of the lumbering industry, 

 until 1912. In that year it was lifted. 



Thereafter the industry was free to 

 expand and was limited only by the 

 size of the allowable cut provided for 

 by the management plans. The volume 

 of timber cut varied in accordance 

 with business conditions : It was up in 

 good times and down in times of de- 

 pression, but through the years more 

 stability was evidenced in this industry 

 than in some other industries, such as 

 farming and livestock raising. 



To date an estimated 2,800 million 

 board feet of timber has been cut from 

 the areas in the Black Hills. Of that 

 amount, about 1/2 billion feet were 

 cut in the old mining days from 1876 

 to 1898, before the national forest was 

 created. Between 1908 and 1948, the 

 cut was 1,084,923,000 board feet. 



The average annual cut of 40 mil- 

 lion feet since 1942 has furnished 140,- 

 000 man-days of labor a year in woods 

 and mills. to local people. 



BLACK HILLS TIMBER has always had 

 a high cull factor (15 to 35 percent) . 

 The timber cuts out mostly low grades 

 of lumber. Eventually, lumber from 

 the Northwest was shipped into the 

 Black Hills territory and competed 

 strongly with local lumber. The larger 

 mills developed new markets by be- 

 coming a supplier of special products 

 that could be made from low-grade 

 lumber boxes and crates for the meat- 

 packing industry, grain doors, table 

 tops made by gluing together small 

 pieces of lumber, and shipping crates 

 for refrigerators. Utilization of a high 

 percentage of the log became general. 



802062 C 



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