NATIONAL FORESTS AND THE INTERMOUNTAIN REGION 7 



THE LUMBER INDUSTRY 



EARLY HISTORY 



Hardly were the Mormon pioneers established in Salt Lake Valley 

 when there came an insistent demand for wood for houses, barns, 

 furniture, fuel, and many other purposes. The rush of gold seekers 

 to California in 1849 brought a boom to the region, and more and 

 more lumber was needed. The mountains close at hand were the 

 only source available. 



Many stories are told of how completely the native forests were 

 made to supply the needs of the early pioneers. The willows along the 

 creeks furnished charcoal for gunpowder. The knotted and stunted 

 mountain mahogany that grows in the crevices of rocks furnished 

 excellent fuel, and from its extremely hard wood were made such 

 articles as drumsticks and flutes. At a later date the Cottonwood 

 along the canyon bottoms and the aspen from the mountains in the 

 vicinity of Salt Lake City were used in conjunction with rags, for 

 the manufacture of paper upon which the Deseret News was for many 

 years printed. To-day, old stumps on the most rugged parts of the 

 mountains close to Salt Lake City and other early settlements tell 

 better than words how tremendously valuable the conifers were for 

 lumber and how the pioneers searched out timber in places where a 

 modern logger would consider it unprofitable to go. 



In 1865 gold was discovered in Boise Basin, and the rush to that 

 region started a demand for lumber there. Timber was vastly more 

 plentiful in Idaho than near the Mormon settlements. In the early 

 days a small lumber industry began, which has continued to grow 

 till the present time. In Utah and Nevada conditions were different. 

 As soon as railroad connections with California and the Northwest 

 were established, lumber from the coast came into use on account of 

 both its higher quality and its lower price, for by that time the 

 most accessible stands in the intermountain States had become greatly 

 depleted by the excessive cutting of earlier years. 



PRODUCTION 



At the present time privately owned timberlands furnish the bulk 

 of the timber cut in the intermountain region. Of the annual cut 

 of approximately 165,000,000 feet, the national forests of the inter- 

 mountain region supplied 75,000,000 feet in 1925, 66,000,000 feet in 

 1926, 51,000,000 feet in 1927, and 64,000,000 feet in 1928 and in 1929. 



Large lumbering operations are developing in the stands of west- 

 ern j^ellow pine and Douglas fir in western Idaho and there is an 

 increasing use of lodgepole pine railroad ties from the forests of 

 eastern Idaho and western Wyoming. 



TIMBER RESOURCES OF THE INTERMOUNTAIN NATIONAL FORESTS 



The national forests of the intermountain region contain approxi- 

 mately 48.000,000,000 board feet of mature timber, of which approxi- 

 mately 12,000,000,000, are Douglas fir, often known to the logger as 

 " red pine," found chiefly in the forests of western Idaho, but ex- 

 tending over the entire region. Eleven billion board feet are western 

 11773°^-30 2 



