FORESTRY IN THE DOUGLAS FIR REGION 



BY THORNTON T. MUNGER, UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE 



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ESTWARD the course of empire takes its 

 way !" The expanding population of our coun- 

 try moved westward and as it went it took with 

 it all the pulsing activities that accompany the modern 

 industrial empire the making of cities where none were 

 before, the construction of Herculean transportation 

 systems, the establishment of industries to supply the 

 needs of the people, the eager harvesting of the great 

 wealth of natural resources. It was primarily the wealth 

 of natural resources that directed the march of progress 

 to the westward in this country the virgin fertility of 



annihilating. But need it be so? Certainly not, when' 

 so much of the virgin forest land is suited primarily for 

 the production of timber crops as is the case in the West- 

 ern forest regions. It is interesting to speculate, there- 

 fore, as to whether the history of the Central Hardwood 

 Region, of the Lake States Pinery, and of the Southern 

 pineries is to be repeated in the Douglas fir region of the 

 Pacific Northwest. 



The forests of Western Oregon and Washington con- 

 tain the largest reservoirs of virgin timber left in* the 

 United States ; and a large proportion of the lumber used 



PRIMEVAL DOUGLAS FIR FOREST IN THE FOOTHILLS OF MOUNT ST. HELENS, SOUTHWESTERN WASHINGTON 



Fifty years ago there were twenty million acres of such dense virgin forest, extending in an almost unbroken strip from British Columbia to Southern 



Oregon and from an altitude of 3,000 feet on the Cascade Range to the Pacific Ocean. 



the soils, the mineral riches of the mountains and the 

 vast expanses of splendid forests. Following closely on 

 the steps of the prairie schooner emigrants who came to 

 till the rich Western soil and of the Forty-niners who 

 came to mine the Western gold, came the lumbermen to 

 harvest the primeval crop of timber which Nature had 

 sowed and which stood ripe for the ax. The lumber 

 industry has been moving westward with the march of 

 progress ; it has always been a pioneer industry, one of 

 the forerunners of intensive industrial development, and 

 has reached its peak of production in every territory 

 before that territory' has become fully peopled and 

 developed intensively agriculturally and industrially. 

 That has been the history of most of the forest regions 

 of the country. The lumber industry has been self- 



by the country comes from this region. Washington 

 has, since 1905, held foremost place among the States in 

 quantity of lumber produced; Oregon now ranks third 

 in production, but first in volume of standing timber, and 

 it will not be long before the increasing annual cut will 

 place her at the head, or next the head, of timber-produc- 

 ing States. 



The volume of standing timber in these two States is 

 enormous ; from the mountain tops the expanses of solid 

 virgin timber appear limitless, and expressed in board 

 feet the amount seems inexhaustible. But logging on the 

 watersheds available to transportation is progressing 

 with alarming rapidity, and it is high time that these 

 States decide whether their timberlands are to be "mined" 

 of their virgin resources and abandoned as unproductive, 



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