FOREST CONDITIONS IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA. 



73 



POLES. 



For the past few years the chestnut pole market has been very de- 

 pressed, as some of the largest consumers have been doing little buying. 

 Table 8 gives the output of poles for those counties of the region in 

 which poles were cut for the market. 



Table 8. — Output of Poles, Pins, Shingles and Miscellaneous Material in 



1909, by Counties. 



Counties 



Chest- 

 nut 

 Poles 



Oak 

 Pins 



Locust 

 Pins 



Shingles 



Miscellaneous 

 Products 



No. 



Thou- 

 sand 



Thou- 

 sand 



Thou- 

 sand 



Thou- 

 sand ft. 

 B. M.* 



Cords** 





450 







200 



200 





Clay.... 





















170 



















5,000 

 5,060 



700 

 5,000 



500 



150 

 115 



1,200 





420 





30 



10 





























780 



730 



14 









1,287 

















25 

 100 

 150 







700 

 4,300 









Mitchell. 





100 



170 

 200 

 250 

 150 



44 



Watauga 







Ashe 





































Totals 



16, 797 



5,700 



600 



3,959 



692 



644 







♦Includes handles, pump logs, poplar bowls, spools, bobbins, etc. 

 ♦♦Includes dogwood shuttles and kalmia pipe blocks. 



Prices of poles range from 75 cents to $3.35 for sizes varying from 

 22 to 45 feet in length, and these prices have varied but little for the 

 past two years. At these prices young chestnut timber will bring two 

 or three times as much for poles as for tanning extract wood. Only 

 the straight and comparatively small trees, however, are suitable for 

 poles. 



If the demand is sufficient the production of chestnut poles will be 

 one of the most important timber industries of this region, for with 

 improved methods of management a large number of poles per acre 

 can be produced in a comparatively short time. 



PINS. 



In past years the manufacture of locust insulator pins was a wide- 

 spread industry, but there has come about an exhaustion of the old 

 timber in all but the remote forests and a sudden decline in the demand. 

 During the summer of 1909 hundreds of thousands of split locust pins, 

 cut one to two years before, were lying in the woods, and manufactured 

 pins were stored in sheds, waiting until a rise in price would justify 

 their removal. About the year before some mills began making oak 



