Sound, Grays Harbor, Columbia River Oregon, 
Willamette River, and north Puget Sound. All 
these except the Willamette River unit are readily 
accessible to tidewater, and are characterized by 
cheap water transportation of logs. In the Wil- 
lamette River unit comparatively few logs are 
transported by water and most of the sawlog pro- 
duction is done by logger manufacturers, whose 
mills are usually located within a relatively short 
distance of the woods operation. 
The earliest logging operations in the region were 
in the vicinities of Puget Sound and the Columbia 
River. In the Columbia River district logging 
began in a small way more than a century ago. 
Supplies of saw timber in these units are still large 
but are being depleted rapidly, particularly in the 
some Oregon counties. In Washington, logging 
in this district has been greatly stimulated of late 
by the establishment of large mills at Longview. 
Continued large-scale logging has greatly depleted 
the accessible privately owned saw timber in the 
Puget Sound district—nearly to exhaustion in the 
counties east of the Sound. In Grays Harbor 
County, the comparatively easy logging ground and 
dense stands of high-quality timber invited early 
operation. This county outranked all others in 
the region in aggregate sawlog production from 
1925 to 1933, although cutting declined rapidly 
in the latter part of the period and in 1933 was 
exceeded by that of Cowlitz County. 
In all units except the Rogue River, where pon- 
derosa pine ranks first, Douglas-fir is the leading 
species in log production, ranging from 91 per- 
cent of the total in the Columbia River, Oreg., 
unit to 60 percent in the Grays Harbor unit. In 
the central Puget Sound and Grays Harbor units 
western hemlock constitutes about 20 percent of 
the total production; in the other units, much less. 
Western redcedar forms 14, 12, and 10 percent of 
the total log production in the north Puget Sound, 
Grays Harbor, and central Puget Sound units. 
Sitka spruce production is significant only in the 
Grays Harbor, south Oregon coast, and north 
Oregon coast units. Port Orford white-cedar logs 
are produced only in the south Oregon coast unit, 
where they form 17 percent of the total sawlog 
production. Practically all the ponderosa pine 
are produced in the Rogue 
logs River 
unit. 
46 
Not aii the sawiogs produced are used in the 
manufacture of lumber. A considerable propor- 
tion of the western hemlock and Sitka spruce logs 
and practically all the white fir logs produced in 
1925-33 were used to manufacture wood pulp. 
Some Douglas-fir and Sitka spruce logs were used 
in veneer manufacture. Most of the western red- 
cedar logs were used for shingles. 
Forest Fuel Wood 
The cutting of forest trees of both saw-timber 
and smaller size for fuel, usually into split cordwood 
dimensions, is a factor in the depletion of growing 
stock. Forest fuel wood, as indicated by the 1930 
production listed in table 13, constitutes about 
three-quarters of the volume of all the so-called 
minor timber products. In 1930 western Oregon 
produced 55 percent of the regional total, although 
it had but 41 percent of the region’s population. 
Practically all the forest fuel wood is consumed 
locally, and the principal markets are the urban 
localities. The wood is trucked to consuming 
centers for distances up to 40 or 50 miles. The 
Columbia River, Oreg., and Willamette River, 
the most populous of the Oregon units, lead in 
fuel-wood production. In Multnomah County, 
Oreg., in which Portland is situated, 29 percent 
of the volume of all the trees of saw-timber size 
felled in the period studied was converted into for- 
est fuel wood, together with 97 percent of the mate- 
rial cut from smaller trees. The chief reasons for 
western Oregon’s greater fuel-wood production 
are: (1) A larger percentage of the population of 
western Oregon than of that of western Washing- 
ton is rural or resident in small communities, and 
in the Douglas-fir region these population classes 
use wood as fuel almost exclusively; (2) the forest 
stands suitable for fuel wood near large cities are 
more nearly exhausted in western Washington; (3) 
coal mined’near Seattle and other Puget Sound cities 
competes with forest fuel in _ local 
markets. 
In western Oregon by far the greater part of the 
forest fuel wood is Douglas-fir; oak is next in im- 
portance, followed by red alder. In western 
Washington, the central Puget Sound unit, the 
most populous, produces roughly half the total 
output of forest fuel wood, and almost all the forest 
fuel wood produced is Douglas-fir. 
urban 
