196 



CONDITIONS BY COUNTIES. 



both rivers. Over them grew gigantic poplars, walnuts, and 

 wild cherries, with lofty hickories and with oaks of various 

 kinds, including the famed Spanish oak, some of which were 

 five feet in diameter. Over the whole region were forests of 

 square miles in extent which had scarcely been reached by the 

 woodsman's axe. Here grew the sugar maples in dense groves, 

 and the spring of the year was the happy sugar-making time 

 when thousands of pounds of maple sugar were made and 

 shipped to various points. In the early days many hundreds 

 of bird's-eye poplars (then called "cat-faced poplars") were 

 felled and roUed into the streams to be floated away or put in 

 heaps and burned in the "clearings" then being opened. 

 Many of the finest trees were used in the building of "worm 

 fences." The ordinary "rail cut" from which the rails were 

 split was usually eleven feet in length. Oak and poplar, and 

 even walnut trees were used for this purpose. I yet remember 

 how readily the walnut "cuts" split and how many hundreds 

 of panels of fence were built of this valuable wood. 



' ' I have no doubt, if the present value of lumber should be 

 placed upon the timber burned in the "clearings" in Mason 

 county, on the hills, along the streams and on the bottoms, from 

 the coming of the first white man in 1774 down to the year 

 1860, that it would aggregate many millions of dollars. ' ' 



A two story house once built near the present town of 

 Ashton was constructed, almost entirely, of walnut logs. The 

 house was in a remarkably good state of preservation when it 

 (burned a few years ago. 



The Lumber Industry. 



The destruction of timber by early settlers is mentioned in 

 the foregoing paragraphs. During the period when the forests 

 were being opened there were here and there the old water- 

 power saw mills, which manufactured lumber for flooring in 

 the log houses. About the year 1860 the water power was re- 

 placed by steam power and a large number of mills — still 

 using the upright saws — were put in operation in the hill sec- 

 tions. This now became a leading industry in the years im- 

 mediately after the war. Circular saw mills were introduced 



