aOR ES he eR Bes OU RG ES 
Ota lh Hehe D) Oli Gul ASS. Fb sR Roe E AG: a OmN 
Future Timber Supplies in Relation to 
Industrial Development 
N considering the adequacy of forest resources 
| present and future, it is necessary first to 
examine the present situation as to forest in- 
dustries, their requirements, and the supplies of 
raw material on hand, and then by using the best 
data available on rates of depletion and growth to 
project the present situation into the future. 
In a century of operation, and 20 to 25 years of 
heavy cutting, the virgin commercial forests of the 
Douglas-fir region have been exploited in a very 
uneven manner, with heavy cutting in the north 
and central parts of the region and little or no cut- 
ting in the southern part. As is shown by the type 
maps at the back of this publication, vast areas 
have been cut over on and near Puget Sound, 
Grays Harbor, and the Columbia River, and large 
areas of virgin timber remain in southern Oregon. 
Approximately 75 percent of the present cut-over 
area (including 84 percent of that in Washington 
and 59 percent of that in Oregon) was logged to 
supply tidewater or Columbia River mills. 
During the period 1925-33, mills on tidewater 
and the Columbia River produced 85 percent of 
the lumber, 95 percent of the pulp, and practically 
Such 
mills have the following advantages over other 
all the veneer manufactured in the region. 
mills in the region: (1) Access to open log markets 
in which logs of any grade can be purchased; (2) a 
wide territory from which to draw logs; (3) access 
by combinations of rail and water transportation 
to both foreign and domestic markets for forest 
products; (4) better opportunity for integration 
with other wood-using industries, owing to cheap 
water transportation—for example, several saw- 
97 
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mills on Puget Sound can sell waste material to a 
pulp mill on the sound, because the waste can be 
transported cheaply in barges; and (5) better op- 
portunity to sell—as fuel wood, hogged fuel, and 
sawdust—material that usually goes into the burner 
at strictly inland mills. 
By far the larger part of the remaining timber of 
economic-availability class 1 in western Washing- 
ton is tributary to mills on tidewater or the Colum- 
bia River. In western Oregon, the class 1 timber 
in the Columbia River and Oregon coast units is 
tributary to such mills, but that remaining in the 
Umpqua and Rogue River units and the southern 
part of the Willamette River unit cannot, under 
present conditions, be moved to coast or Columbia 
River points except at excessive costs. The mills 
at inland points that are operating in competition 
with tidewater and Columbia River mills, are doing 
so in most cases on the basis of special advantages— 
such as preferred locations and easily accessible 
timber—that probably will be available to very 
few additional mills. The production of inland 
mills, now a very small percentage of the total re- 
gional production, is not likely to show any great 
increase until the timber tributary to tidewater is 
cut out. 
Major Forest Districts 
On the basis of transportation—water, rail, and 
truck—the region was divided into six major districts 
(fig. 33) as follows: (1) The Puget Sound district, 
which includes the north, central, and south Puget 
Sound forest-survey units, that is, all the territory 
