Lake Umbagog.
1907
August
  Methods of lumbering in the region about Lake Umbagog
as well as elsewhere in New England have changed greatly
within the past thirty years. In the earlier days there
was little or no demand for any but straight, sound pine
and spruce logs that could be sawn into square timbers
of reasonable size or into boards or planks of a foot or 
more in width. It was customary then to cut only trees
of these species and to pass by all which were less
than fourteen inches in diameter at the point where
they were to severed from the stump. One might then
skirt the borders of a forest when the lumbermen had 
been at work all the previous winter without noticing
any perceptible thinning of the trees. It is far otherwise
now for wherever the lumbermen have been of late
the evergreen trees will be found to have almost wholly
disappeared. What the saw mills cannot use serve as
food for the still more insatiable and destructive pulp mills
and mere saplings only four or five inches through at
the but share the fate of the older trees. Balsams and
poplars are quite as valuable for pulp as are pines
and spruces for lumber and on many of the timber
lands all four trees closer to the size of bean poles or
but a trifle larger are being swept away. This rule 
is not without exceptions, however. Thus I am told
that the Coe and (?) Company of Lewiston still
adhere to the old rule of cutting no trees that
measure less than fourteen inches on the stump.
Until very recently lumbering operations in the forest were
carried on only during the colder months usually beginning about
the first of November and ceasing as soon as the lakes
& rivers become free of ice in the spring and the logs could
be driven to market. Now more or less men are kept in the woods throughout
Methods of lumbering