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Forest Inventory 
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NDOUBTEDLY the most important natural 
resource of the Douglas-fir region is its forest 
land, which comprises 29 million acres of the 
total land area of 35 million acres. Forest land com- 
poses approximately 85 percent of western Wash- 
ington and 81 percent of western Oregon. Approxi- 
mately 27 million acres is classified as commercial 
forest land. Although exceeded in forest area by 
nearly every other important forest region, in the 
United States, the Douglas-fir region, owing to the 
large size of its trees and the density of its forest 
stands, far exceeds any one of them in saw-timber 
volume. The total stand of saw timber at time of 
estimate was 546 billion board feet, log scale. 
Puget Sound, which penetrates to the heart of 
western Washington (see type maps at end of 
report) was formerly surrounded by magnificent 
forests of old-growth Douglas-fir and western 
redcedar. Ease of logging and_ transportation 
attracted lumbermen to lands bordering the sound 
as early as the middle of the nineteenth century. 
Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay, on the coast of 
western Washington, offered almost equally at- 
tractive opportunities for forest exploitation. Prac- 
tically all the old-growth Douglas-fir forests of 
western Washington were within 30 to 40 miles of 
navigable waterways. Now western Washington, 
particularly in the vicinity of Puget Sound and 
Grays Harbor, is characterized by vast expanses 
of cut-over land largely barren of conifer growth. 
The remaining old-growth Douglas-fir stands in 
western Washington are principally in the eastern 
parts of Cowlitz and Lewis Counties. Extensive 
virgin forests of western hemlock, Sitka spruce, 
and western redcedar occur along the Washington 
coast, and on the upper slopes of the Cascade 
224146° —40 2 
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Range throughout western Washington occur ex- 
tensive bodies of old-growth western hemlock and 
balsam fir-mountain hemlock. Large areas in the 
Olympic Mountains and the Cascade Range in 
northwestern Washington are occupied by subal- 
pine and other noncommercial forests, or are bar- 
ren of tree growth chiefly because of altitude. 
There are few extensive bodies of developed agri- 
cultural land in western Washington. The two 
largest are at the northern and southern extremes, 
in western Whatcom County near the Canadian 
border and in Clark County on the Columbia 
River. 
The forest cover of western Oregon (see forest- 
type maps at end of report) differs materially in 
pattern from that of western Washington. Logging 
has removed the virgin timber from extensive 
areas in extreme northwestern Oregon, but almost 
unbroken stands of old-growth Douglas-fir cover 
the lower slopes and foothills of the Cascade Range 
practically the length of the State. Scattered 
throughout this timber belt are comparatively 
small bodies of second growth on old burns, small 
deforested burns, and cut-over areas. At higher 
elevations, reaching to the summit of the Cascade 
Range, is a mixture of western hemlock, balsam 
fir-mountain hemlock, noncommercial forests, and 
barrens. In parts of southwestern Oregon pon- 
derosa pine types predominate. 
In the Coast Range of Oregon the virgin Douglas- 
fir forests are broken by extensive even-aged second- 
growth forests varying in age from 40 to 80 years. 
These are the result of several large fires that burned 
during the middle of the nineteenth century. 
Scattered throughout the Coast Range are a 
number of fairly large deforested burns, and in 
