Forests of Alaska 



367 



gion, with approximately 35,000 in- 

 habitants, is now based largely on the 

 commercial sea fisheries, but lumber 

 production, now approaching 100 mil- 

 lion board feet annually, is growing in 

 importance. When fully developed, the 

 timber industries, including especially 

 pulp manufacture, will likely equal and 

 may even exceed the fisheries in value 

 of yearly output. 



THE BETTER AREAS of the coast for- 

 est lying north and west of southeastern 

 Alaska are included in the Chugach 

 National Forest. This forest consists 

 principally of lands around Prince Wil- 

 liam Sound and on the eastern half of 

 the Kenai Peninsula just north of 

 Seward. Its area is 4.8 million acres. 

 The timber-management plan speci- 

 fies that the timber output will be used 

 to supply the needs of localities in and 

 around the national forest, with the 

 excess going to the lightly timbered and 

 nontimbered sections of Alaska farther 

 to the north, the interior and the Arc- 

 tic-Bering Sea areas. 



The Chugach National Forest con- 

 stitutes the nearest source of supply of 

 large timber items for those areas, and 

 its production capacity is not sufficient 

 to meet their present and prospective 

 demands. Consequently, sales of tim- 

 ber from the Chugach National Forest 

 are not made to concerns that contem- 

 plate shipping their principal products 

 out of the Territory. 



The chief local demand for Chugach 

 products is and likely will continue to 

 be lumber, heavy sawn timbers, and 

 piling. A sawmill with a capacity of 

 60,000 board feet a day, located at 

 Whittier on Prince William Sound, a 

 gateway of the Alaska Railroad into 

 interior Alaska, is the largest mill on 

 the Chugach National Forest. A few 

 smaller mills, ranging up to 10,000 or 

 15,000 feet in daily capacity, supply 

 part of the purely local lumber de- 

 mands at Seward and other towns. 



THE TONGAS S NATIONAL FOREST IS 



in southeastern Alaska. The Alaska 

 forests that will be an important source 



of wood products, especially pulp and 

 paper, for continental United States 

 are those of southeastern Alaska. The 

 system of sea channels there is more 

 elaborate than in the more northerly 

 and westerly sections of the south- 

 coast region, and the timber is thus 

 more accessible. Seventy percent of the 

 area and most of the commercial tim- 

 berlands of southeastern Alaska are in- 

 cluded in the Tongass National Forest. 

 In addition to suitable timber, south- 

 eastern Alaska has that second requi- 

 site for pulp manufacture power. 

 The heavy rainfall and the availability 

 of many high mountain lakes for stor- 

 age reservoirs, give this section good 

 water-power resources. Detailed stud- 

 ies show that approximately 200 of the 

 better undeveloped power sites have a 

 total yearlong capacity of 800 thou- 

 sand horsepower. 



This national forest has a total area 

 of 16,040,000 acres, of which 10 mil- 

 lion acres is within the altitudinal 

 limits of tree growth. Approximately 4 

 million acres carries timber of present 

 commercial quality; another 1 million 

 acres has timber of marginal quality; 

 and still another 1 million acres has 

 timber of such low quality that it is 



