FOREST EXTENSION IN THE MIDDLE WEST. 147 



THE PRESENT TIME PROPITIOUS FOR FOREST PLANTING. 



The diminution of natural timber in the Mississippi Valley has been 

 general. On the eastern side the destruction of forests has been 

 greatest because there the supply was greatest. The valley of the 

 Wabash River is now cleared in most places to the banks of the stream. 

 A prominent farmer of Vigo County, Ind., told the writer recently that 

 he had out a half dozen remaining white oaks to use for posts, and 

 that he would soon have to grow his own posts or buy them. That this 

 sentiment is prevailing throughout Indiana, is shown by the fact that 

 the Division of Forestry has been called upon this year to make plans 

 for the planting of a number of tracts of timber of from 5 to 50 acres 

 each in different parts of the State. 



On the west side of the Mississippi a condition of greater scarcity pre- 

 vails. Little timber is left in western Iowa and Missouri. The valleys 

 of eastern Kansas, which produced large quantities of Black Walnut 

 and Bur Oak, have largely been cleared. (PI. XII, fig. 1.) Arkansas 

 holds the greatest supply of valuable timber in the Middle West, but 

 it is filled with sawmills, many of them of immense capacity, running 

 day and night. The most valuable post and tie timbers of Arkansas are 

 White Oak and Bur Oak, the supply of which is rapidly diminishing. 

 There }^et remains a remnant of Red Juniper in southwest Missouri and 

 eastern Indian Territory, but it can scarcely last a dozen years longer, 

 as the regions are now penetrated by railroads, and it is being shipped 

 out as fast as it can be cut. Originally, the Red Juniper grew in con- 

 siderable abundance in northwest Oklahoma along the Canadian and 

 Cimarron rivers. A few years ago posts could be bought for or 5 

 cents each. The supply is exhausted, and at the present time but a 

 few posts can be obtained at even 12 or 15 cents each. The Red Juniper 

 of the Platte Valley in Nebraska has gone in the same way. No natu- 

 ral supply from either of these regions need be reckoned on in the 

 future. Osage Orange as a native timber is exhausted. 



The consequence of this diminution of post, pole, and tie timber has 

 been a general rise in prices. Good fence posts are now selling 

 throughout the region at from 10 to 20 cents each. Ten years ago 

 they could be bought at from 8 to 12 cents. Telegraph and telephone 

 poles are worth 50 per cent more now than twenty years ago, and rail- 

 road cross-ties 25 per cent more. In the Great Plains, where there was 

 no natural timber, prices have always been high and are now not much 

 higher than ten or twenty years ago. 



On extensive areas of the Great Plains and the Mississippi Valley, 

 prices of posts, telegraph poles, and cross-ties much exceed the cost of 

 growing them. This difference promises profit in timber growing. 

 While prices are high enough for profits under present conditions, } T et 

 conditions are bound to improve. Every year finds the natural timber 



