“The Groves Were God’s First Temples”
If the people of this century continue the destruction of trees as they
are doing at present, a hundred years from now this will be a world
without forests, a woodless, treeless waste. What a desolate picture is
this! What a grave charge will the people of the future have to bring
against us that we recklessly destroy the trees, one of God’s most
beautiful and useful gifts to man, without even an endeavor to replace
the loss by replanting!
During the last hundred years the American lumber belt has moved
westward over a wide space. In the early days of our history nearly the
entire supply came from Maine, and what interesting stories we have
of those brave pioneer loggers and settlers! Gradually the noble woods
which furnished the tall, smooth masts for which American ships were
famous, were destroyed; and the ringing ax blows were then heard in the
forests about the Great Lakes and in the middle Southern states. This
supply is by no means exhausted, but to-day the heart of the lumber
interest is on the Pacific coast.
Around the great central valley which is drained by the Sacramento and
the San Joaquin rivers, six hundred and forty miles long, lie mountain
ranges on whose slopes are some of the noblest forests of the world.
To the north of the central valley the trees of the east and west join,
forming a heavily wooded belt quite across the state.
In the trade, the greatest demand is for lumber of the pine and fir
trees, and of these California has as many species as Europe and Asia
combined. She has, indeed, only a little less than one fifth of all the
lumber supply of the United States. Her most valuable tree for commerce
is the sugar pine. It attains a diameter of twelve feet or more and
is often two hundred feet high. But the most interesting trees of
California and of the world are the Sequoias, the oldest of all living
things. Very far back, in the time of which we have no written history,
in the moist days of gigantic vegetation and animals, the Sequoias
covered a large portion of the earth’s surface; then came the great ice
overflow, and when that melted away, almost the only things living of
the days of giants were the Sequoias of middle and upper California, and
those on some two thousand acres over the Oregon line.
The Sequoia sempervirens, which is commonly called redwood, is
distributed along the Coast Range, the trees thriving only when they
are constantly swept by the sea fogs. For lumber this tree is nearly
as valuable as the sugar pine. From Eureka to San Diego, this is the
material of which most of the houses are built. Because of its rich
color and the high polish it takes, especially the curly and grained
portions, its value for cabinet work is being more and more appreciated.
On account of the presence of acid and the absence of pitch and rosin
in its composition, it resists fire and is therefore a safe wood for
building. When the Baldwin Hotel in San Francisco, a six-story building
of brick and wood, burned down, two redwood water tanks on the top of
the only brick wall that was left standing, were found to be hardly
charred and quite water-tight.
It is the redwood which furnishes the largest boards for the lumber
trade. Not long ago a man in the lumber region built his office of six
boards taken from one of the trees. The boards were twelve by fourteen
feet, and there was one for each wall, one for the floor, and one for
the ceiling. Windows and doors were cut out where desired.
In the heart of the redwood and pine forests there are some thirty mill
plants, and they own about half of the timber district. The methods of
lumbering are exceedingly wasteful. Scarcely half of the standing timber
of a tract is taken by the loggers and what is left is often burned or
totally neglected. Replanting is unthought of and the young trees are
treated as a nuisance.
Three fourths of the forests of California grow upon side hills,
generally with an incline of from fifteen to thirty degrees. When the
trees are gone, therefore, the rain soon washes away the soil, leaving
the rocks bare. When the next rainy season comes, the water, not being
able to sink into the earth, and so gradually find its way to the
streams, rushes down the hillsides in torrents, flooding the smaller
water courses. Then the rivers rise and overflow, causing great damage
to property; but their waters quickly subside, and when the dry season
comes they have not sufficient depth for the passage of ships of
commerce. The total destruction of the forests would soon destroy the
navigability of the principal water highways of the state, while
another serious result would be the lessening of the water supply for
irrigation.
The second variety of the Sequoia, the gigantea, or “big tree,” as it is
called, grows much farther inland than the redwood, being found on the
western slopes of the Sierras. There are ten separate groves of these
trees, from the little company of six in southern Placer County to
the southernmost Sequoia, two hundred and sixty miles away on the Tule
River. The whole put together would not make more than a few hundred
thousand of extra-sized trees, and of the giants themselves not more
than five hundred. These rise as high as three hundred and fifty feet,
and are from twenty to thirty feet through. Near the Yosemite the stage
road passes through the hollow center of one of those monsters. In a
grove owned by the government some cavalry men, with their horses, lined
up on a “big tree” log, and it easily held fourteen, each horse’s nose
touching the next one’s tail.
How old these trees may be is yet unsettled, but Mr. John Muir, their
intimate friend and companion, tells of one which was felled which
showed by its rings that it was 2200 years old. Another which had blown
down was fully 4000 years old. Later investigation makes it seem not
unlikely that some have existed for even 5000 years. It seems a sin to
destroy a living thing of that age.
The great basin of the Santa Cruz Mountains, which contains a large
collection of the Sequoia sempervirens, belongs to the United States
government. So, too, do the Mariposa grove of Sequoia gigantea, and the
General Grant park, and Tuolumne grove, each of which contains a small
number of fine specimens of the big trees. These properties will be
protected, but all other groves, in which are the giant Sequoias, are
in great danger. There has recently been a movement by the government
toward purchasing the Calaveras grove, which has the finest collection
of the big trees known, but nothing decided has been done. Meantime
there are a number of mills engaged in devouring this noble forest.
Unless the people of California take up the matter with earnestness
and energy, the state and the United States will stand disgraced before
mankind for letting these wonders of the world, these largest and oldest
of all living things, be destroyed for the lumber they will make. They
should be purchased by the government and protected, then some movement
should be started in all lumber districts by which waste in logging may
be done away with, young trees protected and cleared, and forest land
replanted with suitable trees. The law excluding cattle and sheep from
the forests is already proving its wisdom by the new growth of young
trees. Only among the giant Sequoias of the Tule and King’s River
district are there to be found baby trees of that species.
The lumber trade is one of the most interesting and necessary industries
of the state. Work in the camp is healthful and well paid. Many a
delicate boy or young man in the city would grow strong and healthy and
live a much longer time if he would cast his lot with the hardy choppers
and cutters of the great forest of the Pacific slope. A logging crew
consists of thirty men, including two cooks. The discipline is as rigid
as that of a military system; each man knows his own particular duties,
and must attend to them promptly and faithfully. Trees are not chopped
down, as used to be the custom; with the exception of a little chopping
on either edge, a saw run by two men does the work. Oxen are seldom
used, as in early days on the Atlantic coast, to haul out the logs,
for they have given way to “donkeys,”--not the long-eared, loud-voiced
little animals, but the powerful, compact donkey-engines.
Lumber schooners and steamers are the chief features of our coast
traffic. Almost all the large cities of the Pacific coast owe their
foundation and prosperity to this trade. San Francisco and Eureka in
Humboldt County are the principal ports of the trade. Mendocino has a
rock-bound coast, with no harbors, but she has fine forests. Here the
lumber steamer secures its cargo by means of suspended wire chutes as
trolleys. The outer end of the trolley wire is anchored in the ocean,
the wire crosses the deck of the moored steamer, the slack being taken
up to the ship’s gaff, thus making a tight wire up and down which the
trolley car with its load is sent.
Sometimes a great raft made of lumber is taken in tow by a steamer
loaded with the same material and they start on a voyage down the coast,
but this is a dangerous venture. If the sea becomes rough the raft may
break loose from the steamer and go plunging over the waves, no one
knows where. The brave captains of our coasting vessels fear nothing so
much as a timber raft adrift which may crash into a vessel at any moment
and against which there is no way of guarding.