58 BULLETIN 1241, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
The Rocky Mountain States embrace a large territory of varied forest condi- 
tions. The northern Idaho and western Montana forests are similar in many 
respects to those of the Pacific coast in Washington and Oregon. Relatively 
heavy stands of western yellow pine in the north grow gradually lighter to the 
south. Large areas are occupied by lodgepole-pin'e forests, resembling the jack 
pine of the Lake States. The forests of various mountain ranges, except in 
some cases in the north, are widely separated by open, treeless country. 
The Rocky Mountain States now support fewer pulp and paper mills than any 
other forested region of the United States. This is partly a matter of density 
of population and local demand for paper, partly the economic impracticability 
up to the present of shipping pulp or paper long distances by rail to the mar- 
kets of the Middle West s,nd East. The handicap of the rail haul as contrasted 
with a possible water haul from the Pacific Coast States and .Alaska may grad- 
ually disappear with increasing population in the Rocky Mountain and Middle 
Western States, the growing demand for pulp and paper, and the inability of 
eastern and western forests to meet requirements. 
SPRUCE-FIR-HEMLOCK PULP WOOD. 
More than four-fifths of all the timber of the Rocky Mountains is of the pulp 
species, estimated at 440 million cords. (Table 62.) The stand of 88 million 
cords of spruce, fir, and hemlock is larger than that of New England, much 
larger than that of the Middle Atlantic States, and nearly as large as that of the 
Lake States. Except in central and northern Idaho and northwestern Montana, 
however, the sulphite-mechanical pulp species are much more scattered and 
hence correspondingly less available. A part of the Idaho and Montana timber 
is inaccessible under present conditions. 
Northern Idaho supports a well-developed lumber industry, the tendency of 
which has been, as in the Pacific Northwest, to pass by the spruce-fir-hemlock 
group of pulp species. Practically the only cut of the latter is for lumber, and 
for that the cut is small. A large amount of timber apparently suitable for pulp 
is being left on cut-over areas. A large portion of the central Idaho material is 
still inaccessible. There is an opportunity in the Engelmann spruce, fir. and 
hemlock stands of northwestern Montana for an enlargement in the immediate 
future of the sulphite and mechanical pulp output. Here the percentage of the 
spruce-fir-hemlock group is larger than in northern Idaho, and the lumber indusl ry 
is much less developed, so that there would be fewer handicaps in securing material 
for pulp and paper mills. Water power is ample. 
A great opportunity is afforded to increase the pulp-wood cut by a proper 
coordination of the lumber and the pulp and paper industries in logging, and the 
use by each of the material most suitable for its products. Such an arrangement 
should aid materially in reducing the amount of wood now wasted in logging 
operations because of lack of market, and could even include the use of sawmill 
for pulp manufacture. Pulp requirements need not, however, be secondary 
or incidental to lumber. They can, in fact, constitute the dominant use for 
, fir, and hemlock. 
Unfortunately, growth data for the species of the spruce-fir-hemlock group 
are not available, since, thev are ordinarily mixed in types containing nonpulp 
species. A part of (he growth under intensive foresi management in the Douglas 
r»ee and Che white-pine types, totaling together Realty i\ million cord--, as 
well as th:it in the sclion-pine typo reaching nearly (> million cords, could be 
counted on. Possibly 1 million cords a year would not bo unreasonable for 
pulp potentialities Of the near future, and permanently there." 
