and Douglas-fir, the market lost by lodgepole pine 
was never regained. Today more than half of all 
the round timbers produced in Montana are larch 
and Douglas-fir, mainly the latter. 
The Anaconda Copper Mining Co., which uses 
most of the round timbers in the State, obtains the 
greater part of its supply in western Montana 
although its operations are widely scattered. The 
smaller concerns generally obtain timbers in the 
vicinity of their mines. Three-fourths of Montana’s 
mine timbers are produced in the western part of 
- the State. 
The Pole Industry 
Prior to World War II some 20 to 30 thousand 
telephone and light poles (mainly western red- 
cedar) were cut annually in Montana. The short 
supply of redcedar timber, the preferred species for 
poles, and also the lack of processing and treating 
plants kept pole production at a low level. Between 
1945 and 1948 10 processing and treating plants 
were built—6 in western Montana and 4 in eastern 
Montana—and the pole industry came into its own. 
These plants, plus the additions to those already 
established, involved a capital investment of 114 
million dollars. In 1947 the industry produced 
325,000 poles. Production slipped badly in 1948 
because of unfavorable market conditions, but rose 
again to 222,000 pieces in 1949 (appendix table 
25) . 
The expansion of this industry was based 
primarily on the utilization of lodgepole pine tim- 
ber. Growing straight and slender in dense stands 
and having a high proportion of the desired 30- 
to 40-foot lengths and 8- to 12-inch diameter classes, 
lodgepole pine has the qualities needed to make 
good telephone and power poles at a low cost. 
Nearly one-third of the lodgepole pine timber in 
the United States is located in Montana, so with 
the rapid depletion of redcedar in other Western 
States the growth of Montana’s pole industry was 
a natural development. 
A greatly expanded rural electrification program, 
beginning in 1945 stimulated the rapid growth of 
the Montana pole industry. Although the propor- 
tion of farms in the United States which are elec- 
trified jumped from 11 percent to 87 percent in 
15 years, there is still a big job to do in bringing 
adequate electric and telephone service to all rural 
homes. If new development proceeds at the rate 
planned by the Rural Electrification Administra- 
tion, about 2,500,000 poles will be needed annually 
between 1950 and 1957. After that the demand 
is expected to drop to 1,500,000 poles a year. 
Rural electrification and telephone cooperatives, 
of course, represent only part of pole requirements. 
There are some 55 million poles in service in the 
United States, exclusive of Rural Electrification 
Administration utilities. The annual replacement 
on these lines is estimated to be 2,700,000 poles 
annually. 
Montana has sufficient timber to supply an even 
larger share of the Nation’s pole needs than it 
has in the past. It is estimated that the annual 
cut of lodgepole pine alone can be stepped up 
four times and even then be well within the 
desirable cut limitation. The major problem of 
the industry is that of meeting strong competition 
from other producing States. Meeting competition 
will require a reduction in production costs, devel- 
opment of preservative treating processes to meet 
buyer specifications, and otherwise creating a de- 
mand for Montana poles. : 
Though Montana’s big new market in recent 
years has been for small poles for rural lines, one 
company is attempting to develop outlets for west- 
ern larch poles 45 feet and longer. Western larch is 
well suited for the production of such poles. It has 
a desirable shape and will produce a variety of 
sizes. Moreover, if properly treated, larch poles 
compare favorably with poles of other species in the 
matter of service life. These factors plus the in- 
creasing difficulty of finding adequate supplies of 
long poles in the South suggest a favorable market 
outlook. In 1949, 15 percent of the poles pro- 
duced in Montana were western larch. 
The Christmas Tree Industry 
For more than 20 years Christmas trees have been 
an important product of Montana’s forests. Nearly 
3 million trees are shipped annually to midwestern 
and eastern markets. This is about one-seventh of 
the total production in the United States. The 
development of the Christmas tree industry in 
Montana is due primarily to the large number of 
Douglas-fir trees on low-site quality areas in the 
western part of the State. Growth on this land 
is sufficiently slow to produce the dense foliage 
32 Forest Resource Report No. 5 U. S. Department of Agriculture 
