A NATIONAL FOREST TIMBER SALE AND ITS PURPOSES 



BY H. H. CHAPMAN 



IN THE last annual report of the Forester, of the 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture, the statement was 

 made that the revenue from the last fiscal year de- 

 rived from the sale of timber products from National 

 Forests totalled one million and five hundred and eighty- 

 one thousand dollars. A corporation with an annual in- 

 come of this amount, would require a capitalization of 

 at least fifteen million dollars, and would rank with the . 

 largest of our industrial or- 

 ganizations. The questions 

 naturally arise, how is the 

 Government managing this 

 business, and are the interests 

 of the public being fully pro- 

 tected, or is the timber being 

 ruthlessly sacrificed for the 

 sake of revenue, and the Na- 

 tional Forests rapidly destroy- 

 ed in the same manner as the 

 white pine forests of the 

 Lake States melted away, and 

 as the southern yellow pine is 

 disappearing? 



No better way of answer- 

 ing these questions can be 

 found than by describing the 

 process by which a recent sale 

 of western yellow pine in the 

 southwest was consummated 

 a sale involving over 600,- 

 000,000 feet of timber in one 

 body, and requiring a twenty- 

 year period for the comple- 

 tion of the operation of log- 

 ging and manufacturing the 

 timber covered by the con- 

 tract 



About five years ago an at- 

 tempt was first made to open 

 up an immense body of sev- 

 eral billion feet of western 

 yellow pine on the Sitgreaves 

 National Forest in Arizona. 

 This timber lies on a high 

 rolling plateau bounded on 

 the south border by a verti- 

 cal cliff known as the Mogollon rim, which trends south- 

 east from the Coconino National Forest where the Santa 

 Fe railroad crosses it. Eastward the timber belt trends 

 constantly farther away from the railroad and becomes 

 more inaccessible until it terminates in New Mexico in 

 a wilderness known as the Datil and Gila National For- 

 ests, one of the least developed portions of the entire 

 United States. The Sitgreaves Forest occupies a long 



SITGREAVES NATIONAL FOREST, ON THE AREA OF A 

 BIG TIMBER SALE 



This is a group of dying and dead veteran yellow pines, with 

 reproduction just starting below them. Amounting to many 

 millions of feet per year, this natural waste is saved by modern 

 timber sale methods. 



section of this belt fully sixty miles from the railroad, 

 and to the south, taking in the drainage in that direction, 

 lies the White Mountain Apache Indian Reservation, 

 equally well forested. North of the Forest lie the bar- 

 ren plains, while along the water-courses are a few small 

 Mormon settlements, Snowflake, thirty miles from the 

 railroad ; Show Low, twenty miles further on, and others, 

 dependent on wagon freight haul for transportation of 



all exports or imports. These 

 towns needed a railroad, but 

 their resources and population 

 were too meagre to justify the 

 construction of a line. But 

 there was one way in which 

 this country could be opened 

 up, and that was by logging 

 and manufacturing the timber 

 to make freight for the road. 

 A small body of timber would 

 not suffice. There must be at 

 least 600,000,000 board feet to 

 provide a continuous revenue 

 for twenty years which would 

 guarantee a fair per cent on 

 the railroad investments, esti- 

 mated to require one and one- 

 quarter million dollars. 



The timber standing upon 

 the National Forest lands 

 amounted to but 235,000,000 

 board feet, and when the cost 

 of logging, manufacturing and 

 marketing this quantity of 

 timber was computed, and 

 distributed over the invest- 

 ment required, it was found 

 that the timber would have to 

 be given away or the inves- 

 tors would lose on every foot 

 of timber which they manu- 

 factured. But across the for- 

 est boundary to the south, on 

 the Indian Reservation, lay 

 400,000,000 feet of the same 

 kind of timber, separated 

 only by a wire fence from the 

 timber on the Sitgreaves Forest. If the purchaser of 

 the first body of timber could be assured of buying the 

 Indian timber, the overhead costs of railroad, mill, log- 

 ging roads, engines and all other equipments, amounting 

 in all to $2,000,000 when distributed over this large 

 quantity of timber would be so reduced for each 1000 

 feet manufactured, that after paying a reasonable rate 

 of interest to the purchaser, a margin of value would 



