THE EVERGREEN TREES OF COLORADO 
By B. O. LONGYEAR 
At no time in the history of our country have matters pertain¬ 
ing to our forests been of such general interest as at the present. 
Such interest is certainly justified when we consider the fact that 
between three and four times as much timber is used by us each year 
as our forests can grow in the same length of time. Many of the 
materials which a few years ago were expected to become substi¬ 
tutes for wood have failed to meet the requirements in many ways. 
Moreover the continued use of wood for new purposes more than 
offsets the saving by these substitutes. Hence there is not only 
apprehension for the future supply of wood but eYen now certain 
great industries are being forced to limit their operations because 
of the scarcity of timber. This is particularly true of the timber 
from which paper pulp is manufactured. 
In Colorado the principal drains upon the timber resources of 
the state have been to supply material for mining timbers, tele¬ 
graph poles,^ railroad ties, fence posts, bridge timbers and native 
lumber. The growing scarcity of our timber trees is being empha¬ 
sized by the rapid advance in price which is now felt in all indus¬ 
tries requiring' such material. 
So long as the forests have been left to the disposition of pri¬ 
vate interests the forests have suffered greatly. The wasteful and 
careless methods of lumbering that have usually been employed in 
this country have frequently been followed by the consuming fire 
fiend. In these ways the larger part of our forest products have 
often failed to reach the markets but have served to darken the 
skies with the smoke of a sacrifice in which the gods have no pleas¬ 
ure. Not only have the trees themselves been destroyed but in 
many cases the burning away of the humus, the slow accumulation 
of centuries, has laid bare the very rocks and made reforestation 
impossible. But this is not all. The rapid and complete removal 
of the forests has in many places shown how great was their influ¬ 
ence upon water movements. Thus with the removal of the forests 
that once surrounded the headwaters of our great streams, dis¬ 
astrous floods in spring and low water in summer have indicated 
the regulating effects which these forests once produced. In our 
own state the forests in the higher altitudes serve to check in spring 
the rapid melting of snow which has drifted among the trees and 
thereby lengthen the period of stream flow during the growing 
season.* The most important effects of the forests in this connec¬ 
tion, however, are due to the character of the forest floor, which is 
* For some of the effects see Bulletin 55, Colo, Exp. Sta. 
