A WORKING PLAN FOR FOREST LANDS IN HAMPTON 
AND BEAUFORT COUNTIES, S. C. 
INTRODUCTION. 
The working plan the results of which are presented in the follow- 
ing pages was made by the Bureau of Forestry of the United States 
Department of Agriculture, at the request of the Okeetee Gun Club, 
under the terms of the offer of cooperation contained in Circular No. 
91. This offer of cooperation contemplates the establishment of exam- 
ples of correct forest management under the varying conditions of 
different forest regions. 
The tract of the Okeetee Gun Club is fairly typical of that portion 
of the South Atlantic coast plain which extends through the States of 
South Carolina and Georgia. This region is a low, perfectly flat 
country, only slightly above the level of the sea. It is characterized 
by poor, sandy soils and frequent swamps and savannahs. Farther 
inland the topography becomes rolling, soil and drainage conditions 
are entirely changed, and the forest assumes a very different character 
and development. 
The Longleaf Pine was formerly the chief timber tree of this region. 
Now the supply of this timber is everywhere seriously diminished, 
and in most localities entirely gone. Some years ago the report was 
circulated that the timber resources of the coast were practically 
exhausted. The annual production of lumber and the capacity of the 
mills have nevertheless steadily increased. Among the circumstances 
which have sustained the lumber industry is the substitution of large 
improved mills, unexcelled in equipment, for the crude and wasteful 
sawmills which, here as elsewhere, were the pioneers of the industry. 
The era of the small mill was marked by enormous waste. Its use was 
profitable only so long as the supply of virgin timber was abundant. 
Improvement in methods of lumbering and in facilities for transpor- 
tation have tended to a steadily increasing production of lumber. 
Furthermore, the rapid increase in the value of logs and lumber has 
steadily lowered the standard for merchantable timber, both in size and 
quality, and has led to the general substitution of the Loblolly and 
Cuban pines for the Longleaf. 
The lumber industry in the coast region has now reached an era of 
marked intensiveness. There is no tract of merchantable timber 
oO 
