22 THE FORESTS OF ALASKA. 



to 3 inches in diameter, cutting the stumps close to the ground, and 

 piling the brush well to get it out of the wa}^ of the haulers. 



Unlike the coast forests of Alaska, the interior forests have suffered 

 much from fire. Except on limited areas the cutting which has so 

 far taken place in the interior is not serious, but the fire damage has 

 been great. It probably would not be far from the truth to say that 

 in the Fairbanks district ten times as much timber has been killed by 

 fire as has been cut for either fuel or lumber. Fire follows the pros- 

 pector and the settler, and everywhere that a mining camp develops 

 under present conditions it is to be expected that fire will kill much 

 of the timber. There are several causes for this. Miners and 

 hunters are careless. Camp fires are neither properly guarded nor 

 extinguished. A fire gets out and no one pays any attention to it 

 unless it threatens his camp. Fires, too, may be set to clear off the 

 ground so that prospecting is easier. Fires have been purposely set 

 to secure dry timber, and the slashings along the telegraph lines have 

 been another source of danger. Smudges are built to keep away the 

 mosquitoes; in fact it is commonly said by the residents that mos- 

 quitoes cause more fires than any other one thing. The rainfall is 

 light during the summer, and it does not take a long period of 

 drought to make the forest burn rapidly. In the Klondike region, 

 and on the upper Yukon, in Canada, fires have done even much more 

 damage than in Alaska. During the entire trip of 460 miles down 

 the river from Whitehorse to Dawson, one is almost constantly in 

 sight of fire-killed forests. Much fire-killed timber is also seen along 

 the Yukon in Alaska from Eagle to the mouth of the Tanana, but 

 from that point to the beginning of the tundra the forest, though 

 small, is, for the most part, as yet undamaged by fire. 



The danger season is short, with extreme limits approximately 

 from May 15 to September 15. During 1909 there was a bad fire 

 near Fairbanks early in the season, but none during July or August. 

 On the other hand, there were fires along the Yukon in both the latter 

 months. No measures but the posting of notices are taken to pre- 

 vent forest fires in the interior of Alaska, and little is done to control 

 them, except as they immediately threaten someone's property. 



THE FUTURE OF ALASKA FORESTS. 

 THE COMING DEMAND FOR TIMBER. 



Alaska has a permanent future. For the southern and southeastern 

 coast its chief potentialities lie in fishing and in lode mining of gold 

 and copper ; for the interior there is the mining of gold, copper, and 

 coal, and in certain localities there are opportunities for agriculture. 

 Fairbanks and Nome have passed their palmiest days as placer camps. 



