Image provided by: North Santiam Historic Society; Gates, OR
About The Mill City enterprise. (Mill City, Or.) 1949-1998 | View Entire Issue (April 23, 1959)
First Lumber Cut in Oregon Country in 1827 Tree Farms, Sustained Yield Insure Permanence of State's Top Industry By Arthur W. I’riaulx When in 1877 at Fort Vancouver. Di. John McLoughlin, famed Hudson's Bay factor, gace the sign that turned the water-power ed muley sawmill to saw the first boards ever cut west of the Miss issippi, it was the start of an em pire in the Oregon Territory. By 1837, a sawmill was operating at Newberg, another at Salem in 1840, and still another at Oregon City in 1842. Mills, crude affairs powered by water wheels, sprang up throughout the Willamette Val ley wherever lumber was needed to build towns and farms. By the 1850’s, mills were operating along the Columbia River and down the Oregon Coast, and they were run ning full tilt supplying lumber for the California gold rush. Since 1938, Oregon has led the nation in total lumber production, and for the past five years, it has pioduced more than half the na tion’s softwood plywood, as well as a million tons of pulp a year. But this was not always so. For eight decades, the lumber in dustry of Oregon was on a hand- to-mouth basis, suffering from overproduction. Only during times oi great national stress, such as during World Wars I and If, did it prosper, or during times of great catastrophes, such as the San Francisco and Japanese earth quakes, when vast quantities of lumber were needed for reconstruc tion Power Makes Progress Power and wheels tell the story of the lumber industry’s progress. First, logging was handled with jack screws as logs were felled along river banks and rolled into t‘.c water for transport to the mills. Then came horses, oxen, crude steam donkey engines; then more powerful ami refined steam equip ment. Away from the waterways, logs were moved by logging rail roads, but there were vast areas of forested land considered inac cessible by rail. Then, after World War I, came the technological revolution which has changed the face of Oregon ¡■no brought every tree in the state within reach of the mills. The crawler type of tractor and the log ging truck, whose development was sparked by the first war. have made logging big business. 250 Separate tirades From crude early sawmills which hacked irregular-sized boards and cants from Douglas fir logs, the in dustry today claims the finest pre- cis.on machinery: electric-power- « d. even some electronically guid ed equipment. Lumber is so finely manufactured for ultimate use that mills produce as many as 250 sep al ate grades for strength and for appearance, compart'd with the few simple items of the early days. The coming of the railroads in the 1870’s had its effect on open ing up new markets for Oregon- trade lumber in the midwest, and tm opening of the Panama Canal spumed the expansion of cargo mills along Oregon's waterways as the Pastern Seaboard became our customer. Today. Oregon's eight to ten- biIlion fixit annual production of lumber goes to every crossroads in America and to virtually every country on the globe Lumber, ply wood, pulp and paper — the for est products — give employment annually to 90.000 men and wo men. among the highest paid in dustrial workers in the world The annua) value of Oregon's forest products at wholesale prices to the rolls to $1 300 000,000 which to more than twice the value of all agricultural products grown an nually. Oregon will always be the lead ng lumber-producing state in the nation, because man is doing something about managing our bursts Tn 1940. following many disastrous years of forest fires, the Keep Oregon Green program was launched under the sponsorship of Governor Charles Sprague and many leading lumbermen, as well as dedicated public forestry of ficials. both state and federal Flrr liOsne» Drop Since the advent of Keep Oregon Green, forest fire losses have stuunk from an annual average burn of 135,000 acres to less than 10 (MM) acres a year, sometimes as little as 5 (Wto acres The greatest single advance ment in conservation in our his tory started the same year in Oiegon and Washington The Tree Farm program Private timber owners, seeing the example of the declining forests in the Lake States and New England decided Hwy must manage their forest holdings for perpetual growih if the mills and factories of the I state, which live on wood, were to operate permanently. Thus was founded the Tree Farm program, which some have call ed the greatest single invention of mar. for the conservation of our forests. It establishes management plans for the maximum production of forest crops on every acre ot private forest lands. State and federal forests have similar plans Future In Young Trees After 125 years of harvesting. Oiegon forests contain 440 billion board feet of saw timber, but the real hope of the future is wrap- Md up in its millions of acres of ing young trees from one to 100 years of age. Forest fires have bien cut to a bare minimum, so seed sources are protected. AI - though we have developed new techniques for planting, such as ar rial seeding of logged lands by helicopter and hand planting. Moth er Nature still reseeds about 90 per cent of all logged lands natur ally. the seed coming from blocks of seed trees left for that purpose It is the estimate of expert for- esters that Oregon's 26 million acres of commercial forests will be able to produce perpetually a volume of timber adequate to maintain a forest economy at a- bout its present level. In the nan-drenched Douglas fir forests of western Oregon, an acre will produce an average of 700 board feet in a year. In the drier eastern Oiegon pine region, the growth late is about 150 board feet per acre per year. With these definite figures available, it is possible to project with reasonable accuracy the growth rate of our vast forest resource for generations into th«' future. What of the future? There are those who predict the 2x4 and the board will become as obsolete as the carrier pigeon in another 50 years. That’s dream stuff, for there will always be a need for conventional lumber and plywood Research Helps Industry However, the Oregon Forest Products Laboratory at Corval lis, financed by a four-cent-per- tbousand tax on all logs cut in the state, is coming up with some wondrous by-products from wood, cellulose, and bark. Private firms in their laboratories are making equally amazing discoveries as research moves into the nation's oldest industry. It is possible that, in the near future, we may have a chemical industry here in Oregon manufacturing a wide variety of pioducts from leftover woods from sawmills and plywood plants. The potential dollar value of this in dustry is tremendous. . What sort of chemicals and products can be made from wood, bark and cellulose? From bark, j'ou can get cork, fibres, tannins, «bugs, quercitin (widely used in food manufacturing», and many other products. From cellulose, you can get wood sugars, feeding mo lasses. land fertilizers and extend • rs, drugs, chemicals, ships stores The list is endless. Oregon's vast lumber and forest products industry of today, with its amazing mechanical contriv ances and multitude of products, is indeed a far cry from the tiny mill at Fort Vancouver which Dr John McLoughlin proudly and prophetically started. Oregon has some of the most pioductive forest lands in t h e world and farsighted citizens to maintain these lands perptually in forests, for which this land is best suited THE TRACK-TYPE TRACTOR, shown in the upper part of the picture, has superseded the "deliber- ate oxen” used in the early days of Northwest logging. The lower right part of the picture, from a photograph taken in 1890, shows how the old-timers did the job. ! ' i, ix».’ ( ’ ‘ ■ --t It -r-.--.-—*- Feeders of Life Ontario Argus-Observer: The smaller cities and towns of eastern Oregon are the life-feeders of this area In Malheur County, wher»’ agriculture, which includes live stock. is the main source of income, the smaller cities are showing growth." Food-Producers Sherman County Journal. Moro "We will continue to grow smaller in population percentagewise and mom important in th«' economy, for the growth of cities increases th«' importance of th«' country because fo<xl is produced in the country and the higher th«’ percentage of the people who live in th«’ city th«' mon’ important it is that they b»’ fed City people run railroads, make TV’ programs, package goods. s«'ll shoes, rural folks raise f«*xi What can you do without" Di«' first chief justice of th«' Washington Territory was arrested by militia on th«' governor's oni«'rs after th«’ justice had ordered the arrest of th«’ governor for contempt of court Small-City Service Myrtle Creek Mail "To the many people «■ngagi'd in lumbering mm mg. and ranching in Oregon, the smaller cities and towns provid«- the necessaries and most of th«’ pleasures of living With hospitals. libraries, fine schixvls, and civic and recreational facilities, they mean SERVICE in capital letters to a widespread population Then is but one metropolitan center of th«’ state, with but one fourth of the state s population The remainder of mom than a million persons live in an interdependency of big tim« industry, agriculture, and small business with attendant profession al services-building friendly atmo' phem in which each knows person ally and is concerned with the wel- f;«m of those who am his neigh hors "
