New Security for Forest Communities 



335 



works is illustrated by a review of the 

 first case to which it was applied, the 

 Shelton Cooperative Sustained- Yield 

 Unit. 



The Simpson Logging Co. started 

 its operations in Shelton, the seat of 

 Mason County, Wash., in 1895. At 

 first, the company's operations were 

 confined to logging. The entire output 

 was sold on the log market of Puget 

 Sound. The company grew and pros- 

 pered with the new community. By the 

 time the Sustained-Yield Unit Act was 

 adopted, the frontier town of Shelton 

 had become a flourishing town of 4,800 

 population, and the Simpson Logging 

 Co. had matured into a substantial 

 concern that operated two large saw- 

 mills and a Douglas-fir plywood plant 

 at Shelton, as well as two outlying log- 

 ging camps in the tributary forest area. 

 The other important source of indus- 

 trial support for the community was a 

 pulp mill of an annual capacity of 

 75,000 tons. 



DURING THE FIRST HALF CENTURY 

 of timber operations in and about Shel- 

 ton, the vast virgin forest, which had 

 stretched back almost endlessly from 

 the shores of Puget Sound, had shrunk 

 to an alarming degree. Serious losses 

 from forest fires in 1902 and active 

 timber cutting by several large opera- 

 tors pushed back the forest frontier. 



Then, one by one, as the virgin forest 

 was depleted, the operating firms closed 

 down or moved away. The last to reach 

 the end of its holdings was the Henry 

 McCleary Timber Co., which, besides 

 its logging facilities, operated a sawmill 

 at Shelton and a plywood plant and 

 sash and door factory in the nearby 

 company town of McCleary. The 

 Simpson Logging Co. bought out the 

 McCleary concern in 1942. 



Unlike most of its contemporaries in 

 the logging and lumbering business on 

 Puget Sound, the Simpson Logging Co. 

 did not let its cut-over forest lands re- 

 vert to the counties for taxes, as was 

 then customary. It kept its holdings 

 and, as the opportunity permitted, ex- 

 tended its ownership of reproducing 



forest lands by buying the cut-over 

 areas of other operating companies and 

 by redeeming lands that the counties 

 had acquired through tax foreclosure. 

 Simpson pioneered in urging and se- 

 curing the establishment of a forest 

 fire-protection system in Washington. 

 The firm's forest-land program was 

 based upon a belief that forestry in 

 western Washington would ultimately 

 be a profitable business enterprise 

 that the ownership and protection of 

 young growing forests would be the 

 foundation on which such an enterprise 

 would be built. 



A few years after lumbering opera- 

 tions started near Shelton, the unap- 

 propriated public domain in the remote 

 mountainous country, beyond what 

 was then considered to be the economic 

 limits of timber exploitation, was set 

 aside as a part of the Olympic National 

 Forest. 



Little public notice was taken of the 

 action; the reservation was largely be- 

 yond the zone of high-quality old- 

 growth Douglas-fir, in rugged terrain 

 where logging would be difficult and 

 costly, and far from settlements and 

 the Puget Sound log market. The 

 values involved were so low that the 

 withdrawal action was of little local 

 concern. 



During the time that the better and 

 more accessible private timber in the 

 lowlands was being used up, the na- 

 tional forest stumpage almost went beg- 

 ging. But with the development of 

 transportation systems for harvesting 

 the private forest zone and the intro- 

 duction of improved logging equip- 

 ment, the national forest resource 

 became physically and economically 

 accessible. It was no longer a remote 

 area of low-grade timber in the back 

 country; it became a valuable forest 

 property whose management was vital 

 to the well-being of the people in 

 Shelton and McCleary. 



When the Sustained-Yield Unit Act 

 was passed, the Simpson Logging Co. 

 owned 20,000 acres of virgin timber- 

 land that contained a billion board feet 

 of timber. Simpson also had 140,000 



