The Pacific Northwest is world famed for its timber. The first white
explorers to set foot upon its fertile soil were awed by the magnitude and
grandeur of its boundless stretches of virgin forests. Nature has never
endowed any section of our fair world with such an immensity of kingly
trees. Towering into the sky to unthinkable heights, they stand as living
monuments to the fecundity of natural life. Imagine, if you can, the vast
wide region of the West coast, hills, slopes and valleys, covered with
millions of fir, spruce and cedar trees, raising their verdant crests a
hundred, two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet into the air.
When Columbus first landed on the uncharted continent these trees were
already ancient. There they stood, straight and majestic with green and
foam-flecked streams purling here and there at their feet, crowning the
rugged landscape with superlative beauty, overtopped only by the
snow-capped mountains--waiting for the hand of man to put them to the
multitudinous uses of modern civilization. Imagine, if you can, the first
explorer, gazing awe-stricken down those "calm cathedral isles," wondering
at the lavish bounty of our Mother Earth in supplying her children with
such inexhaustible resources.
But little could the first explorer know that the criminal clutch of Greed
was soon to seize these mighty forests, guard them from the human race
with bayonets, hangman's ropes and legal statutes; and use them,
robber-baron like, to exact unimaginable tribute from the men and women of
the world who need them. Little did the first explorer dream that the day
would come when individuals would claim private ownership of that which
prolific nature had travailed through centuries to bestow upon mankind.
But that day has come and with it the struggle between master and man that
was to result in Centralia--or possibly many Centralias.