204 FORESTS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



tories are now utilizing this. There are few saw-mills, and nearly 

 all of the building material used by the larger towns is brought 

 from other sections of the State. 



THE WESTERN PINE BELT OF THE PIEDMONT PLATEAU. 



Lying to the west of the compact red and gray loams are fine- 

 grained and mostly sandy loams, usually red or reddish in color 

 with a thin surface soil, usually less fertile than the compact red 

 and gray loams and less suitable for tree-growth. This division 

 extends from the central part of Rockingham, Iredell, and the 

 central part of Rutherford counties northward and westward to 

 the base of the Blue Ridge and its outlying spurs. A few local 

 areas of compact red loams occur, and the original timber on these 

 soils was entirely of broad-leaf trees. 



The surface of the entire division sloping eastward from the 

 escarpment of the Blue Ridge is broken and rugged. The culmi- 

 nating points of the divides between the rivers which here find 

 their head waters are low mountain chains running irregularly 

 east and west. These mountains and the groups and isolated peaks, 

 lying still further to the east, the Sauratown and Crowder moun- 

 tains, and Kings mountain have an arborescent growth similar to 

 that on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge, and their woods will 

 be considered in connection with that (p. 210). 



Here, however, it may be well to say that the woods on the 

 north slopes yet contain some merchantable yellow poplar in 

 some of the hollows, with ash, northern red oak, and white oak. 

 The woods on the southern slopes, and this is especially true of 

 the South mountains, the Sauratown and King's mountain, and 

 the broad water-shed between the Green and Pacolet rivers, have 

 been many times burned, and pine timber has been very badly 

 damaged while tie and tan-bark oak has been greatly thinned or 

 reduced to stool-shoots. 



The forests of this division are of pine mixed with broad leaf 

 trees, of which the scarlet oak is the most abundant. It is espe- 

 cially common on gravelly soils and has associated with it the 

 Spanish oak, post oak, white oak and, to a less extent, the black 

 oak, while along all high and sandy crests and roeky slopes the 



