550 THE FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



street. This was in 1844. Mr. Higginson obtained liis supply of lumber in those days from Hall & Jerome, of 

 Menomiuee, Michigan, Elisha Bailey, of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and - - Fisk, of Depere. In 1845 he had a 

 contract for 1,000,000 feet with William F. Ferry, of Grand Haven. Lumber came also from Kalarnazoo river, 

 Saint Joseph, and Muskegon. hi 1844 Mr. Higginsou purchased a cargo from Mr. Kose, of Muskegou, and, as it 

 was a beautiful lot of lumber, running W\ per cent, upper grades, he was willing to pay a good price, obtaining 

 it at $5 75 per thousand feet. The first cargo of Saginaw lumber which reached Chicago was brought by James 

 Fraser, one of the original proprietors, of the plat of Bay City, who built two mills at Kawkawlin, in latter years 

 known as the Ballon mills. This was in the year 1847 or 1848, and the cargo attracted a good deal of attention, 

 because it was the first lot of circular-sawed lumber that had ever been seen by any of the dealers, and because of 

 its general cleanness of appearance, the attractiveness of a lot of circular-sawed sidings among it, and its excellent 

 quality. All these combined to make the cargo a novelty in its way, and it found a sale at $8 per thousand feet, 

 an extra good price for those days. Average cargoes at this time were quoted at $6 50 to $7 for mill-run lumber, 

 culls out, and it did not need a very coarse piece to rank as a cull. Culls were rated at half price. The retail 

 market held common lumber at about $8 during the summer, and $9 was asked for dry lumber through the 

 winter. Common included everything below first and second clear ; third clear, selects, picks, 'and finishing grades 

 generally, being an invention of a later day. First clear sold at from $12 to $16, and second clear at $10 to $12 ; clear, 

 undressed flooring brought $12, and common flooring $10. The lath trade was mostly in what was known as board 

 lath, although narrow lath arrived in small quantities. The trade of the city in 1843 was about 12,000,000 feet, and 

 this was considered as remarkable as to us were last year's sales of 1,500,000,000 feet, or about 140 times as much 

 more." 



MICHIGAN. 



Michigan once possessed a tree covering of great density, richness, and variety. The hard-wood forests of the 

 Ohio valley covered the southern portion of the state, extending to just north of the forty-third degree of latitude. 

 North of this hard-wood belt the character of the forest changed ; the white pine appeared, occupying the drier 

 and more gravelly ridges, and, gradually increasing in size and frequency, became the most important element in 

 the forests of the central and northern portions of the southern peninsula. In the northern peninsula, especially 

 in the basin of the Meuominee river, it covered the sandy plains almost to the exclusion of other species. The 

 forests of hard wood, occupying low, rich soil between the pine-covered ridges, were valuable in their stores of 

 sugar maple, birch, ash, beech, oak, and other northern trees, while the swamps common in the northern part of 

 the state abounded in tamarack and yellow cedar of large size and excellent quality. 



Forth of the central portion of the lower peninsula large tracts of barren plains exist. One of the most 

 extensive of these tracts occupies a considerable portion of Crawford county, covering an area of several hundred 

 square miles. A second barren region exists in Lake county, and there are others in Ogemaw and losco counties ; 

 similar barrens occur in the northern peninsula, the largest in Schoolcraft and Marquette counties. The soil 

 covering these barrens is a light sandy loam, supporting a stunted growth of gray pine, birches, poplars, and scrub 

 oak. These sandy plains owe their existence, perhaps, to the continual burning of the forest, prostrated 

 possibly, in the first instance, by tornadoes, and thus affording abundant material for a fire hot enough to consume 

 the vegetable mold of the surface and render the soil unfit to produce a second growth of heavy timber, or in 

 many instances any tree growth whatever. 



Serious inroads have already been made upon the forests of Michigan. The hard wood has been generally 

 cleared from the southern counties, now largely occupied by farms, and the timber remaining in this part of the 

 state, in small, scattered bodies, can hardly suffice for the wants of its agricultural population. The merchantable 

 white pine has been cut from the banks of the principal streams and the shores of the lakes, and what now 

 remains is remote from water transportation or scattered in isolated bodies of comparatively small extent. The 

 hard-wood forests of the pine belt, however, although greatly injured by fire in parts of the state from which the 

 pine has been cut, and invaded along their southern borders by agricultural settlements, contain, especially in the 

 northern third of the lower peninsula and through the northern peninsula, vast quantities of valuable timber. 



FOREST FIRES. 



The forests of Michigan have long suffered from destructive fires. These have generally originated in the 

 neighborhood of the loggers' camps or upon the farms of the agricultural pioneer, while the virgin forest has 

 generally, although not always, escaped serious conflagrations. The timber-prospector and the hunter are 

 responsible for many fires in the primeval pine forest of the northwest ; but, as a rule, fires follow and do not 

 precede the lumberman. The reason is obvious: The logger in his operations leaves the resinous tops, brandies, 

 and chips of the pine trees scattered far and wide; these by the following midsummer become dry as tinder, and 

 afford abundant material to feed a fire started by a careless hunter, log-cutter, or farmer clearing land near the 

 forest. Such fires, which too often follow the cutting of pine forests of the northwest, have inflicted incalculable 

 injury upon the country. They have destroyed vast quantities of hard-wood timber; they have consumed the > ouug 



