82 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



and export of lumber. Large quantities of timber in New Mexico were 

 cut from the public lands for delivery under contract to railroads 

 which were built in Mexico, notably to the Mexican Central, which 

 openly advertised in New Mexico for railroad ties to be delivered to 

 its agent in Mexico ; and the Santa Fe Railroad transported much 

 of this material out of the territory, contrary to law. In 1885, the 

 United States instituted suit to recover the value of 60,000,000 feet 

 of lumber cut by the Sierra Lumber Company in California.'^'' In 1887, 

 a United States district attorney reported that in Nevada hundreds 

 of men were systematically engaged in cutting timber from the public 

 lands. He estimated that in the region about Eureka, Nevada, several 

 hundred square miles of land had been thus swept bare.^^ In Montana, 

 a trespasser was found to have 9400 cords of wood piled up on the 

 public lands along the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks, waiting 

 shipment.^* 



The Gulf states — Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana — 

 with their vast forests of oak and pine, their convenient and acces- 

 sible harbors for shipment, their numerous streams, lakes, and lagoons 

 offering cheap transportation to market or mill, were for years in- 

 fested with a class of non-resident plunderers, who shipped to various 

 parts of the world immense quantities of the finest ship timber, invad- 

 ing even the United States naval reserves with their sawmills.^'' One 

 Italian firm working in western Florida was charged with receiving 

 4,512,000 feet of lumber taken from the public lands, and another 

 Italian firm was reported to have taken even more. Agents in Alabama 

 reported more than 17,000,000 feet of timber taken from public 

 lands in that state, transported to Pensacola, and there sold in the 

 market or shipped to foreign ports. Whole fleets of vessels entered 

 the harbors of Pensacola, Sabine Pass, Atchafalaya, and other places 

 along the shore, and carried away cargoes composed mainly of timber 

 taken from the public lands.'"' 



56 Report, Sec. of Int., 1885, 234.1. 



57 S. Ex. Doc. 259; 50 Cong. 1 sess. 



58 No. Pac. R. R. Co. vs. Lewis; 162 U. S., 366. 



59 Report, Land Office, 1881, 376. 



60 Ibid., 1888, 54; 1880, 33. It was not Federal lands alone that were invaded by 

 timber thieves, for state lands suffered quite as much. Thus even as late as 190T, 

 Governor Hughes of New York was fighting timber thieves who had stolen large 



