THE EVERGREENS OF COLORADO 



By BURTON O. LONGYEAR 



HEN the first settlers in Colorado staked their claims along 

 the streams that issue from the canyons in the foothills or 

 penetrated the mountain fastnesses in search of grazing land, 

 they found vast forests of evergreen trees clothing the rugged 

 mountain sides and reaching down the gulches to the very 

 border of the plains. The development of this country during 

 the past fifty years, however, has worked great changes in 

 these forests. The laying of railways, the construction of bridges, the 

 development of mining and the building of houses, fences and telephone 

 lines, have all made their legitimate demands upon them. But other 

 forces of purely destructive character have also been at work. Insect 

 pests have killed a great many trees and led the way for the attacks of 

 such fungi as bring about the decay of timber. Storms of wind, wet 

 snow or sleet have sometimes uprooted the trees or crushed them to 

 the earth. 



The heaviest toll, however, that has been levied upon our forests in 

 Colorado has been here, as elsewhere, by forest fires. These have either 

 consumed the timber, often laying bare the very rock, or licked the 

 foliage from the trees and left their naked trunks to slowly whiten in 

 the sunshine and storms of the years that have followed. Some of the 

 older residents of our state tell of forest fires that burned for forty days 

 without any attempt being made to check them. Forest fires in the 

 mountains were to be expected with the coming of dry weather and as 

 timber was more plentiful than labor, these fires were free to burn them- 

 selves out. Today much of the magnificence of our mountin scenery is 

 sadly marred by the ghastly pole patches which mark the location of 

 these fires where the bare rocks often show like tombstones to com- 

 memorate the disaster. 



In spite of all these drains upon our forest resources, the forests of 

 pine and cedar, of spruce and fir which remain are still the glory of our 

 mountains in Colorado. New generations of trees, moreover, are coming 

 up in many cases to take the place of those that have disappeared and 

 some future period will see again perhaps the evergreen mantle spread 

 over the scars that now appear. Moreover, the real worth of our forests 

 in this country is now being recognized as never before and State and 

 Nation are uniting their efforts to protect and to utilize in more con- 

 servative ways the timber that yet remains. No more are fires allowed 

 to burn and spread through the forests, that have required centuries to 

 grow, without heroic efforts being made to check them. Throughout 

 every part of our forest lands today are men whose duties are concerned 

 with the control of the worst enemy of the forest, the fires. The people 

 who visit the mountains for pleasure and recreation, too, are becoming 

 imbued with the true sentiment of forestry so that the menace to our 

 woodlands from this source is being lessened year by year. It is now 



