The decisions of industrial 

 foresters and other 

 landowners on the rotation 

 age of the millions of acres 

 of pine plantations currently 

 growing and being planted 

 in the South will have an 

 obvious impact on the 

 material sizes available to 

 industry. People and 

 computers continue to 

 attempt to analyze every 

 facet of genetics, spacing, 

 species, burning, and stand 

 improvement in an effort to 

 optimize return on forest 

 investments while supplying 

 their industrial, recreational, 

 and esthetic needs and 

 wants. 



Hardwood forests are a 

 major component of 

 southern timberlands, 

 supporting a thriving, if 

 erratic, sawmill industry that 

 specializes in furniture 

 stock, hardwood flooring, 

 and highly prized and priced 

 veneer for interior residential 

 and commercial uses and 

 facings for furniture. 



The management of these 

 hardwood lands is a 

 complex and challenging 

 job that industry undertakes 

 primarily by natural stand 

 management emphasizing 

 the favored species. There 

 are limited but ongoing 

 efforts at plantation 

 management of a relatively 

 small number of species 

 being grown with specific 



end products in mind. 

 Crown-Zellerbach has 

 intensively managed 

 cottonwood plantations in 

 the Mississippi Delta, and 

 International Paper 

 Company has established 

 sweetgum plantations on 

 its Mississippi River 

 bottomlands for specific 

 mill needs. 



These activities, taken in 

 the face of an 

 ever-decreasing quality of 

 remaining trees, are most 

 difficult to quantify and will 

 not be further dealt with in 

 this study. 



Hardwoods are playing an 

 ever-increasing role in the 

 pulp industry, both as a 

 raw material and as boiler 

 fuel, and may yet require 

 much more professional 

 attention than they currently 

 attract. 



William Parks established 

 the South's first papermill 

 at Williamsburg, VA, in 

 1774, primarily using rags 

 as raw material. The first 

 serious attempt to 

 manufacture paper from 

 southern pine was 

 undertaken in 1903 near 

 Pensacola, FL, by the firm 

 of Smith and Thomas. It 

 was a failure (Oden 1973, 

 p. 23). 



The really significant 

 beginning of today's 



