306 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
trade of the state. Our houses are built of lumber, our streets 
are planked with lumber, our fields are fenced with lumber, 
and our flumes and sluices are made of lumber. And some 
parts of the state are very rich in timber and can readily 
supply the whole demand. Lumber is of three kinds, sawn, 
hewn, and split; the last two kinds being very small in im- 
portance as compared with the first. About one hundred and 
seventy millions of feet of lumber are sawn annually in Cali- 
fornia, and at the average price of twenty dollars per one 
thousand feet at the mill, the total amount of the lumber trade 
may be estimated at three millions of dollars. The chief lum- 
bering districts are in the Sierra Nevada, and very near the 
coast. Mendocino is the largest lumbering county of the state, 
and according to the assessor’s report for 1860, produced thirty- 
five millions of feet in that year. The mills are at Timber 
Cove and the mouths of the Noyo, Albion, and Big Rivers; 
and the timber is nearly all redwood. Humboldt occupies 
the next place, sawing thirty million feet per annum; and 
Santa Cruz county next, with ten million feet annually. All 
the timber cut in Santa Cruz is redwood; in Humboldt there 
are about equal amounts of redwood, spruce, and fir, and a 
little fragrant cedar. Santa Cruz ships much lumber to the 
southern part of the state, and Mendocino and Humboldt 
supply most of the redwood lumber for the San Francisco 
mirket. The lumber cut in the mining counties is mostly used 
vear home, large amounts being consumed for sluices, flumes, 
and im other mining enterprises. 
The method of getting the logs to the mills in Humboldt 
county is peculiar. The mills are all on the shores of Hum- 
boldt Bay, which is surrounded by flat land six or eight 
miles wide. Through this flat land run tide-water sloughs or 
channels, into which brooks run from ravines in the hills. The 
land in this county has all been Federal property, and has been 
open to pre-emption; and most of the lumbermen have laid 
claim to the tracts where they work, or have bought them 
with state-school warrants, under which any of the Federal 
