CUTTING AND BURNS. 27 



No attempt has been made to leave the cut-over area in clean condition. There 

 has been no piling of tops, except on the areas cut over since the ranger patrol of 

 the General Land Office was established. However, much of the cut-over area, 

 in the Boulder drainage especially, has been burned over and the tops and limbs 

 thus removed. In general the cutting itself has caused no particular damage to the 

 forest floor nor to the young growth. Most of the cut timber consisted of lodgepole 

 pine, and owing to its abundant and rapid reproduction the logged tracts, where not 

 run over by fire, are promptly restocking. There is one exception to the rule noted, 

 namely, at Cowles mining camp near Haystack Peak. This camp is only 700 or 800 

 feet below timber line. The supply of timber in the immediate vicinity is limited, 

 while the consumption, although not rapid, is constant. Here the steep hillsides 

 are being totally denuded by the choppers and, with the limited and slow restockage 

 of the subalpine forest, a long time must elapse before new stands replace those now 

 being cut. 



Most of the timber is exceedingly difficult of access and can only be taken out 

 of the reserve with much, labor and expense. Except for local use, or unless means 

 of transportation through the National Park are provided, so as to reach the heavy 

 stands in Slough Creek and adjacent basins, the bulk of the forest will remain uncut 

 for a century or more. Boulder and Stillwater rivers and Kocky Fork Creek are 

 drivable during high water, but these streams are sunk in deep, rocky canyons, and 

 the amount of timber accessible by way of them is small. 



BURNS. 



The areas burned over , during the last thirty-five or forty years aggregate 

 138,410 acres. The tracts are of varying extent and occur in all portions of the 

 area, but more particularly in the northwest quarter, in the Boulder, Rosebud, and 

 Rocky Fork drainage basins. They are of smaller extent in the southern third of 

 the area, although by no means wholly lacking. 



As far back as its history can be traced the forest has been more or less devas- 

 tated by fires, its age and composition proving that these were very common and 

 of wide extent during the Indian occupancy of the region. The large preponder- 

 ance of lodgepole pine, is wholly the result of these fires, the great complexity and 

 variation in the age of the stands indicating successive ones during centuries. Not 

 less than 70 per cent of the forest land has been burned over within the last one 

 hundred and twenty years, showing that since the cpming of the white man there 

 have been more fires than when the Indian held possession. In the last twenty- 

 two years 24 per cent of the forest area has been burned, while during the one 

 hundred and thirty years preceding about 45 per cent was swept by fire. 



The forest fires in this region are remarkable for their destructive force and 

 intensity. Here and there are uneven aged stands, where extremes in age and a 



