THE NATIONAL FORESTS OF CALIFORNIA 7 



NATIONAL FOREST RESOURCES 



TIMBER 



During the Spanish-Mexican days Californians builded almost 

 entirely of adobe. Sutter's sawmill in Eldorado County, where Mar- 

 shall discovered gold, was probably the first lumber operation in the 

 State. Placer mining called for timber for flumes and dams for 

 storage water to operate the monitors and sluice boxes; quartz min- 

 ing required timber to line the shafts and tunnels. So lumbering 

 and the development of mines, reservoirs, and ditches began simul- 

 taneously. 



Lumbering first started in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and 

 spread along the lower slopes as the mines extended and as the towns 



A FOREST SERVICE TIMBER SALE AREA 



Under scientific forest management the national forests of California supply 300.000,000 

 feet of timber annually. Thrifty seed trees are left to insure a future timber crop, 

 and all brush and debris is piled "and burned in the winter to reduce the tire hazard 



and cities grew in the valleys. It has been steadily working higher 

 up the slopes of the mountains as the lower and more accessible 

 timber has been cut. The Santa Cruz redwood region was logged 

 as the cities along the coast grew, and later the industry spread 

 to the region bordering the Pacific to the north of San Francisco. 

 Southern California first drew on the scattering pine forests of the 

 San Bernadino mountains. 



California now cuts from her forests, which contain one-fourth 

 of the timber on the Pacific coast, about 2 billion feet of lumber 

 per year. Lumbering ranks fourth among the industries of the 

 State, and the annual value of lumber products amount- to $62,- 

 000,000, of which $9,700,000 comes from the national forests. One 

 of the most remarkable features of the situation, however, is the 

 2GG99 — 27 2 



