FOREST CONDITIONS IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA. 



73 



POLES. 



Tor tlie past few years the chestnut pole market has been very de- 

 pressed, as some of the largest consumers have been doing little buying. 

 Table 8 gives the output of poles for those counties of the region in 

 which poles were cut for the market. 



Table 8. — Output op Poles, Pins, Shingles and Miscellaneous Matekial in 1909, by Counties. 



Counties 



Cherokee 



Clay 



Graham 



Swain 



Macon 



Jackson 



Haywood 



Transylvania. 



Henderson 



Buncombe 



Madison 



Yancey 



Mitchell 



Watauga 



Ashe 



Alleghany 



Chest- 

 nut 

 Poles 



Oak 

 Pins 



No. 



Thou- 

 sand 



450 



Locust 

 Pins 



Thou- 

 sand 



Shingles 



Thou- 

 sand 



200 



Miscellaneous 

 Products 



Thou- 

 sand ft. 

 B. M.* 



200 



Cords' 



170 



5,000 

 5,060 



700 

 5,000 



500 



150 

 115 

 1,200 



30 



420 

 10 



1,287 



780 

 730 

 14 



700 

 4,300 



100 



170 

 200 

 250 

 150 



25 

 100 

 150 



44 



Totals. 



16, 797 



5,700 



600 



3,959 



*Includes handles, pump logs, poplar bowls, spools, bobbins, etc. 

 **Includes dogwood shuttles and kalmia pipe blocks. 



Prices of poles range from 75 cents to $3.35 for sizes varying from 

 22 to 45 feet in length, and these prices have varied but little for the 

 past two years. At these prices young chestnut timber will bring two 

 or three times as much for poles as for tanning extract wood. Only 

 the straight and comparatively small trees, however, are suitable for 

 poles. 



If the demand is sufficient the production of chestnut poles will be 

 one of the most important timber industries of this region, for with 

 improved methods of management a large number of poles per acre 

 can be produced in a comparatively short time. 



PINS. 



In past years the manufacture of locust insulator pins was a wide- 

 spread industry, but there has come about an exhaustion of the old 

 timber in all but the remote forests and a sudden decline in the demand. 

 During the summer of 1909 hundreds of thousands of split locust pins, 

 cut one to two years before, were lying in the woods, and manufactured 

 pins were stored in sheds, waiting until a rise in price would justify 

 their removal. About the year before some mills began making oak 



