Alabama; the Apalachicola 

 in Florida; the 

 Chattahoochee in Georgia; 

 the Bienville, DeSoto, Holly 

 Springs, and Homochitto in 

 Mississippi; the Croatan in 

 North Carolina; the Francis 

 Marion and the Sumter in 

 South Carolina; and the 

 Angelina, Davy Crockett, 

 Sabine, and Sam Houston 

 in Texas. 



The lands acquired for 

 these forests have been 

 characterized as the lands 

 nobody wanted" (Shands 

 and Healy 1977). In general, 

 they were cutover, 

 abandoned, and/or 

 tax-delinquent properties, 

 purchased from willing 

 sellers. 



The Homochitto, for 

 example, was comprised of 

 areas that were culled over, 

 leaving only the defective 

 material and inferior species. 

 On that forest, timber stand 

 improvement work was at 

 first confined to the removal 

 of unmerchantable material. 

 The abandoned fields and 

 heavily cut areas were 

 naturally restocking, so that 

 early planting was confined 

 to fields where erosion 

 control was needed. 



On the DeSoto, more than 

 half the acreage was 

 classified as "less than 

 10-percent stocked," so at 

 first timber management 



activities were confined 

 almost wholly to the 

 reforestation of denuded 

 forest land. Between 1934 

 and 1938, the Civilian 

 Conservation Corps planted 

 seedlings of 13.6 million 

 longleaf pine, 10.2 million 

 slash pine, and 845,000 

 loblolly pine. Total acreage 

 planted was 25,065. Early 

 timber sales were in 

 negligible volumes, mostly 

 small sales of pine and 

 hardwood sawtimber. Pine 

 distillate wood (virgin 

 longleaf stumps) was the 

 only product removed in 

 any appreciable volume 

 (possibly a total of 12,000 

 tons). 



The Sumter's lands were 

 mostly abandoned, 

 overcultivated cotton fields 

 with some naturally seeded 

 loblolly and shortleaf pine. 

 Much of it was purchased 

 in small tracts of less than 

 300 acres. A policy 

 statement written in 1 938 

 provided for improvement 

 cuts and thinnings in pine 

 stands. Diseased trees and 

 poor-risk trees were marked 

 along with trees to be 

 thinned out of overly dense 

 stands. Markets were 

 available for both pine 

 pulpwood and sawtimber. 



The Francis Marion was 

 made up of large tracts 

 from lumber companies. 

 Mostly cut over, the lands 



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