THE CROSSETT STORY

The Beginning of Forestry in

Southern Arkansas and Northern Louisiana R. R. Reynolds

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Forest Service

General Technical Report SO-32
1980
U.S. Department of Agriculture

Forest Service

General Technical Report SO- 32

THE CROSSETT STORY

The Beginning of Forestry

in

Southern Arkansas and Northern Louisiaua

R. R. Reynolds

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would Iike to give special thanks to A. E. Wackerman, who was

Chief Forester for the Crossett Lumber Co. from 1927 to 1932 and who

was a member of the staff of the Southern Forest Experiment Station

when my work at Crossett began. He provided much encouragement and

guidance to me during those early years and for many years after.

..*

ill
R. R. Reynolds was born on December 21, 1906 near

Howard City, Michigan. He graduated from the

University of Michigan Forestry School with a B.S. in

1929 and an M.S. in 1930.

In July 1930, he joined the Southern Forest Experiment Station. He spent his first 3 years with the

Station working on county Forest Economic Studies, and

on case studies of individual companies. In 1933, the

Crossett Experimental Forest opened, and Reynolds

spent the next 34 years establishing and directing the

research center. He is author or co-author of about 175

publications.

Reynolds retired from the Forest Service in 1969, but

he has remained active in the forestry field, as a member

of the Society of American Foresters and as a practicing

tree farmer.

iv
PREFACE

This brief history describes some of the more important forestry and related

happenings in southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana between 1930 and

1955. This was the period in which clearcutting of the virgin pine timber came

to a crashing halt-because there was no more. It also marked the start of

managing the second-growth stands at a time when no one knew how or why

they should be managed. These stands, which had grown up in spite of no

protection or management, were generally understocked and widely variable in

age classes. To confound the problem, it was a universal belief that lumber from

second-growth trees was practically worthless.

The account is largely limited to the shortleaf-loblolly pine-upland hardwood forests of southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana because the writer

of these notes grew up with (in a professional sense) and knew this area intimately. For the same reasons, the story is centered on Crossett, Arkansas,

and on holdings of the Crossett Lumber Company.

Many other areas and forest ownerships have equally interesting histories,

but foresters and managers in the Crossett area were leaders in the changeover

from virgin to second-growth timber management and operation in the South.

A great many “firsts” were hammered out here. And for 40 years, people from

around the country-and the world-came to Crossett to see the far-reaching

developments. They learned how they might put the same practices in use on

their own areas and forests.

THE CROSSETT STORY

The Beginning of Forestry

.

i n

Southern Arkansas and Northern Louisiana

R. R. Reynolds

IN THE BEGINNING-

“CUT OUT AND GET OUT!”

Sawmilling of the virgin shortleaf and loblolly

pine timber in southern Arkansas and northern

Louisiana began on a large scale in the 1890’s.

Mills cutting upward of 50,000 bd. ft. per day were

common, one was located 30 to 40 miles or so in

every direction. Because of the many logs needed

every day and the fact that logging trucks were

unheard of, all large-scale logging was done by

railroad. Generally, two spurs were constructed

off the main-line into each 40-acre area, and teams

of oxen or horses were used to skid the logs to the

spurs. Here logs were picked up, by steamoperated loaders that ran on rails on top of the log

cars, and placed on the log cars for transportation

to the mill (fig. 1).

Although some stands of timber had as much

as 26,000 bd. ft. (Doyle) per acre, the average that

was usable, by standards in use at the time, was

about 7,000 bd. ft. (fig. 2). This was according to

Levi Wilcoxon, longtime logging and woodlands

Superintendent of the Crossett Lumber Company

of Crossett, Arkansas.

In any event, by the middle to late 1920’s, the

end of the big cut was near at hand, and by 1930

many of the mill-owners, who had come South

after logging in the Lake States had been completed, started looking at the big untapped virgin

stands of the West as the location for their next

operations.

Many families had moved into the uplands of

southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana, had

homesteaded, and had established farms many

years before the coming of the big sawmills. To

these farmers, trees were something that had to be

disposed of by cutting and burning before the

areas were suitable for row crops. Since machinery

for such operations was not available in those

days, the farmers often welcomed the big

sawmillers with open arms. According to an oft

Figure I.-Sawmill #l, power plant, log pond, and log ramp

of Crossett Lumber Co. Mill housed two highspeed band mills. (FS 394380).

1
repeated story, the Crossett Lumber Company

people set up a land office at the county seat in

Hamburg, Arkansas, and offered $2.50 per acre in

hard cash, for the farmer’s timber or timberland.

When word of this got out, small timberland

owners by the hundreds hurried in to get rid of

their extra land or timber before those “Damn

Yankees ran out of the stuff.”

In other words, as late as 1933 many people

thought that timberland (or areas with trees) was

wild and undeveloped land. It would be of real

value only when the trees were cleared and the

acres put into pasture or row crops.

When logging of the virgin timber began on a

large scale, no one thought about developing the

second-growth stands. Only one kind of lumber

was worth anything for construction purposes:

slow growth virgin. Second-growth trees were

often rapid growth, and second-growth lumber

was supposed to be practically worthless “because

it would warp or shrink or twist.” And it supFigure 2.- Virgin loblolly-shortleaf pine-upland hardwood

stand near Crossett, Ark., in 1934. Some of the

larger trees were 34 to 36 inches in diameter. The

young woman pictured is Christine Hendrix (Mrs.

A. G. Jacobson).

posedly had very little strength. So even though

the lumber companies only cut trees that were

about 14 inches and larger in stump diameter,

they made no attempt to keep the smaller pines

and hardwoods from injury. Many of those were

cut and used for ballast and rough ties for the spur

logging railroads.

It was also a certainty that once the pine

“slashings” had dried out they would catch fire,

and a nice hot burn would kill a large proportion of

these smaller seedlings, saplings, and poles.

Because of this and because there was no

organized attempt to protect the woods from fire,

it now seems amazing that many of the smaller

pine trees came through the fires, began to grow

at a rapid rate, and began to produce seed.

Seedlings sprang up and some thin, but

respectable, young pine stands with trees of many

diameters developed on many of the areas that

had been cut over 10 to 20 years previously.

Hardwoods, from sprout size up to about 20

inches d.b.h. (diameter breast high), had always

been intermingled with the pine in virgin stands.

Since such hardwoods had little or no value at the

time, the ones that were not seriously damaged in

the cutting of the big pine stands continued to

grow and reproduce. So the new, young pine

stands often contained as many or more hardwoods than pine-and many of these hardwoods

were larger than the pine.

PROFESSIONAL FORESTRY

COMES TO CROSSETT

For the few companies in the South that did

not fold up when the virgin timber neared an end,

the decision to manage their second-growth forest

for timber production was a gradual one, evolving

as a last resort. The Crossett Company was no

exception.

Until about 1930, the Crossett Lumber

Company continued to offer its cutover land for

sale to farmers and others. The company also tried

raising cattle on an experimental basis. It was

decided that something of better grade than usual

“range” cattle should be produced, so the company purchased a high-quality and very expensive

bull from Iowa in order to improve the strain. The

idea was good but the bull could not stand the

2
ticks and the heat. The story was told that in hot

weather they had to put him into a padded cell in

the barn, with fans blowing on him from “before”

and “aft.”

Two areas were included in the cattle venture.

One was located about a mile east of Crossett on

the Unity Road (now U.S. Highway 82). The other

area was at the northern end of the Prairie Du

Butte in Louisiana. The cattle venture failed, but

in 1927 some of the old Cattle Farm area east of

Crossett was planted with pine trees. This was the

first sizeable loblolly pine plantation in the area

(fig. 3).

Figure 3. - Crossett Lumber Co. ‘s cattle farm plantation of

loblolly pine. Stand was 14 years old at the time of

the photograph.

Having tried in vain to find suitable uses for

its “cutover,” the Crossett Company probably

was in a receptive frame of mind for most any idea

when Prof. H. H. Chapman entered the picture.

Prof. Chapman, who headed up the annual Yale

University summer camp for forestry students at

Urania, Louisiana, became interested in some of

the second-growth stands that had developed on

the Crossett Company holdings. With the aid of

some of his students, he inventoried some of these

areas and suggested that perhaps the Company

could make a second cut of logs on some locations

once the cutting of the virgin timber had come to

an end. In any event, he undoubtedly was

responsible for creating an interest in “timber

possibilities” in the minds of the owners of the

Crossett Lumber Company.

The interest was great enough for Company

officials to agree to the appointment of a

professional forester, W. K. Williams, who over

considerable opposition in 1926 and early 1927 put

through a proposal to start leaving pine seed trees

(called “mammy trees” by the saw crews) at the

time the virgin timber was being cut. He also

began trying to interest the local people in fire

protection for the woods. This latter proposal was

of mountainous proportions because all the folks

knew that the woods had to be burned over every

few years “in order to kill the snakes and the

ticks” and to “green up the grass.”

Williams resigned from his position after

about a year to become Extension Forester in the

Washington Office of the Department of

Agriculture. He was replaced in March 1927 by A.

E. (Wack) Wackerman, who was a forestry

graduate of the University of Minnesota and of

Yale University (fig. 4). According to Wack, he

Figure 4.-A. E. (Wack) Wackerman, second forester for the

Crossett Lumber Co. Wack had much to do with

the successful adoption of forest management for

the Company’s stands.

3
went to work under the general direction of Prof.

R. C. Bryant of Yale University, who had been

employed as consultant in forestry matters by the

Crossett Company. He was to correlate his work

with Levi Wilcoxon, who at the time was logging

superintendent. Levi had foreseen the need for fire

protection on company timberlands and had built

five firetowers in strategic locations on Company

lands. These had been connected with a telephone

system. Wack reported that the towers were “in,

but not working because no one had ever had

experience or training in fire protection before.”

Thus, one of his first major jobs was to set up a

fire protection system and to get it working. His

second big assignment was to carry out a cruise of

two of the blocks of older cutover lands to

determine: (1) the amount of second-growth pine

and hardwood present, (2) growth and mortality,

and (3) the amount of virgin timber remaining.

He would then prepare possible management and

cutting plans.

THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE

COMES TO CROSSETT

When I joined the Southern Forest Experiment Station in July, 1930, fresh out of the

University of Michigan School of Forestry, many

of the large southern mills had closed and more

were closing every month. The production of

lumber had been largely taken over by small,

“peckerwood” mills that could be easily moved

from place to place, and logging could be done by

two or three pairs of mules or horses. It was

agreed almost universally that the South would

soon be out of the large volume, large-sawmill

business, and few had any idea as to what would,

or should, happen to the “cutovers.”

Because of this situation, the Southern

Station’s economics division, to which I was

assigned, was devoting most of its time to “Forest

Economics Studies.” The objective was to inventory the timber and timberland in a county,

determine the growth possibilities, estimate the

amount of abandoned farmland that could be

planted to trees, assess the volume of forest

products still being produced, and approximate

when the remaining sawmills and other woodusing plants would run out of raw material and

have to close.

The Station also felt that one of its main

thrusts should be to attempt to help save as many

of the forest industry operations as possible. This

included cooperative agreements with industries

to help inventory various company forests (when

invited to do so) ; to help work out management

plans; to do mill-scale and other research studies;

and to determine what kind of logs could be

profitably handled by the existing utilization

plants. These agreements were called “Case

Studies.” It was felt that results from one study

could be used by other companies or timberland

owners with similar type stands and problems.

The first Case Study was with the OzarkBadger Lumber Company at Wilmar, Arkansas.

Information was gathered on volumes of merchantable pine and hardwood per acre and data

needed for local volume tables were compiled.

Information on annual growth and mortality were

computed. Most important, a plan of management

was suggested that would allow a harvest of logs

for the company sawmill, at the same time that

the growing stock on the company’s forests would

be gradually improved and increased. The objective was to help show how it might be possible

for this company not only to stay in business but

to increase the production of logs, lumber, and

other products on a sustained yield basis.

Field work on the Ozark-Badger case study,

undertaken during the period of April 27 to May

20, 1932, was largely performed by Art Spillers

and myself. Assistance was given by James

Daniels, who was mill and logging superintendent

of Ozark-Badger, and by L. K. Pomeroy, co-owner

of the company, who was later to become famous

as a timberland owner and forestry consultant.

Overall supervision of the work was by I. F.

Eldridge, head of the economics division staff.

Meanwhile, effects of the great depression that

started in 1929 were being felt by the southern

pine lumber industry generally. Both price and

demand for lumber dropped alarmingly. The

Crossett Lumber Company, among many, moved

to meet the challenge to their existence by cutting

costs drastically, including salaries of their

forestry personnel, by 50 percent. This did not

stop the balance sheet from showing red ink, and

in desperation the Company management cut

some salaries, including Forester Wackerman’s,

by another 50 percent a year later.

After such drastic reductions in salary,

Wackerman was more than willing to accept an

offer of employment on the staff of the Southern

4
Station, and he was assigned to the economics

division. He made the transfer early in 1933 and

was headquartered in New Orleans.

Wackerman’s previous inventories of the older

second-growth stands at Crossett had indicated

that the Company might be able to continue

sawmill operations on a reduced scale if it made

some radical changes in operating policy. Because

lumber from fast growing second-growth shortleaf-loblolly pine was not readily saleable,

Wackerman had thought that Crossett might

“stretch out” the cut of tha last 26,000 acres of

virgin, culled virgin, and advance second-growth

timber. They could then have, for several years,

some “cream” high-grade lumber from the virgin

stands to go along with the “skim-milk” lumber

from the second-growth. * ’ As was mentioned earlier, the Forest Service

was willing and anxious to assist any timberland

owner who was interested in working toward

sustained yield production of forest products. And

the Crossett Company seemed a fine example of a

company that might well benefit from cooperation

with the Government. Thus came about the

_ second case study the station undertook to help

private industry attempt to move into the entirely

new second-growth forestry or forest management

field.

The Southern Station entered into a

cooperative agreement with the Crossett Company, under which the station would provide

technical personnel to mark one or more compartments of the remaining 26,000 acres mentioned above, known as the “East Block.”

Before leaving the Crossett Lumber Company,

Wackerman had cruised this East Block area, had

made a growth study, and had prepared volume

tables for the virgin and advance second-growth

stands. He had determined that, if the 26,000

acres was divided into 10 blocks of about 2,600

acres each, one block could be cut each year on a

light selection cutting basis, and would yield from

8 to 10 million bd. ft. of logs. Growth would be

such that 10 years hence the merchantable volume

would have grown back to the original amount

and another cut could be made.

I was chosen to handle this marking job and I

arrived, with my wife Geneva, in Crossett on

August 13,1933. Field work started immediately,

as preliminary arrangements had been made to

use five boys from a local Civilian Conservation

Corps (CCC) camp. Because this was the first

large-scale marking of timber on a selection basis

in the region, we decided to keep more detailed

records than would normally be required. All cut

and leave trees were measured, and cut trees were

marked with paint at the time of measurement.

The record was by one-inch diameter classes, and

the tally was by diameter and number of 16-foot

logs *

It might be of interest to note that the strictly

virgin timber was marked to a guiding diameter

limit of 24 inches and oldfield timber to 17 inches.

These limits were flexible, however, and any trees

below these limits were marked for cutting if

defective or very limby, or if the stand needed

thinning in a particular .spot. Fast growing and

high-quality trees above these limits were left to

compensate for the trees below the limits that

were taken. Marking of the first unit was completed November 10, 1933.

THE BEGINNING OF SELECTIVE

CUTTING AND MANAGEMENT‘

As the end of the virgin timber approached

throughout the region, nearly all concerned with

logging agreed that railroads just could not be

used for logging the second-growth stands At

least 2,600 bd. ft. (Doyle) of logs of good size

would have to be cut per acre to make it pay. The

relatively small size of the second-growth logs

would cause the costs per thousand board feet to

soar. Furthermore, only a few of the trees in the

many-diametered, natural second-growth stands

were large enough to cut for logs. Seemingly, what

was needed was a system of stand management

and harvesting that would allow light cuts per

acre and, at the same time, permit the remaining

trees to develop into merchantable sizes. This

pointed to the need for trucks.

Although they were very crude compared to

today’s models, a few trucks were being used by a

few small mills. Could trucks be depended upon to

produce a reasonable volume of logs for the large

mills? And could such transportation be used for

light harvests in second-growth stands?

The Southern Station was interested in this

problem because it was a common one for nearly

all mills in the South in the early 1930’s, but the

station had no funds for undertaking such a

study. I was encouraged to apply for cooperative

funds from the Charles Lathrop Pack Foundation

6
Figure 5-A truckload ofpine logs produced on the Charles Lathrop Pack Selective Logging Study area near Fountain Hill, Ark.

Note the 32 in. z 6 in. high pressure tires and the team of horses hitched to the front of the truck to help it out of the

woods. CCC crewman was keeping records on volume per load and time required for loading and hauling.

for a “Selective Logging Study,” which was

approved in the late summer of 1934. Secondgrowth natural shortleaf-loblolly pine-hardwood

stands owned by the Crossett Lumber Company

were used for the study. The objective was to

selectively log blocks of timber that had been

marked for the removal of various volumes of pine

and hardwoods, and determine the costs of felling,

skidding, loading, hauling, and sawmilling.

The selected area was located about 5 miles

southwest of Fountain Hill, Arkansas. Work on

survey of block boundary lines and inventory of

stands began September 5, 1934.

The trucks were gasoline powered and were

used in combination with small two-wheel trailers

(fig. 5). Both truck and trailer were equipped with

32 in. x 6 in., high-pressure tires. Loading was

cross-haul with horses.

On November 5,1934, with help from our fiveman CCC crew, I began marking trees in the first

block to be logged near Fountain Hill. To learn

time-study techniques and work out procedure

problems, we chose a fairly old “oldfield” stand

that was marked for a rigid 17-inch diameter limit

harvest.

Trees and logs were cut with cross-cut saws,

skidded a short distance to truck-loading points

by horses and loaded by horse cross-haul onto

trucks. They were then transported to a large log

storage area on the company’s A.D.&N. Railroad

(Ashley-Drew and Northern Railroad, locally

known as the “All-Day And Night Line” because

it usually took all day and part of the night for the

train to make a round trip from Crossett to

Monticello, Arkansas, a distance of 45 miles) (fig.

6).

As soon as all the logs-they had to be

produced in 1934 before the winter rainy season

started-had been cut they were loaded on

railroad log cars and transported to the mills in

Crossett for mill cost and lumber out-turn studies.

Each log was marked with tree and log number

and time cost studies were made of each stage of

the operation. Lumber out-turn, grade, and value

were computed for each log and each tree. Thus, it

was possible-after the field work and sawmilling

were completed in 1935-to summarize costs and

returns for trees of various sizes and for the

amount cut per acre from the various test plots.

On October 1, 1935, field work on the main

part of the study got underway. On this portion

we planned to cut, on an improvement selection

6
basis, about 2,000 bd. ft. (Doyle) of pine and

1,000 bd. ft. of hardwood per acre from 40 acres;

1,000 bd. ft. of pine only per acre from 80 acres,

and 500 bd. ft. of pine only per acre from 80 acres.

All logs would be numbered and handled as

before, and time studies of all phases of the

operation would also be made as before.

The field work was completed November 25,

1936. Although the analysis of the mass of information obtained and the final report would not

be completed for about 2 years, much very

valuable information was available. Since this was

the first study of its type in the country, the

demand was great for tables, data, and articles of

all types. Among these was a local volume table

for second-growth, natural shortleaf-loblolly pine

by d.b.h. and log length. This was probably the

first such table for the South. A local board-foot

volume table for second-growth uplandhardwoods was also produced. Data on yield by

grade of lumber obtained from the second-growth

trees and logs of various sizes were in great

demand. Data on cutting, skidding, loading, and

hauling costs for second-growth shortleaf and

loblolly pine stands cut on a selection basis were

also of great interest to many foresters and

timberland owners interested in future forestry

ventures. Many special compilations of data were

made for many people and several articles on the

general subject of “Good Lumber From SecondGrowth Southern Pine” and “Good Forestry is

Good Business” were written. And at the same

time, we were covered up with visitors who were

interested in details of the method of timber inventory, determination of allowable cut, and

marking procedures for second-growth pine

stands to be managed under the selection basis.

The final report on the Pack study found that

small logs (B-inch to lo-inch top diameter and up

to 18 feet long) of all grades and #3 and #4 logs

(rough and knotty) of up to 16-inch top diameter

were costing a company (such as Crossett) much

more than they were realizing from the lumber

produced therefrom. The study also indicated

that, if the logs were of reasonable size and grade,

it would be profitable to selectively log as little as

750 bd. ft. (Doyle) per acre. Further, if dense

spots of small trees were thinned for pulpwood

and most of the hardwoods about 4 inches and

larger could be removed for logs, or acidwood, or

were girdled, the lightly stocked second-growth

stands could be put into fine shape for future

management and growth.

Figure 6. - Crossett Lumber Co. log train with a load of second

growth shortleaf-loblolly pine and hardwood logs

from the Pack Selective Logging Study.

(FS3.50903).

THE CROSSETT RESEARCH CENTER

AND EXPERIMENTAL FOREST

Before the marking of the first unit of the East

Block was completed in 1933, the Crossett

Lumber Company offered the Forest Service an

area of about three sections of second-growth

timberland to be used as an Experimental Forest

and Research Center. Location could be anywhere

on the company’s holdings. So my notes for

Friday, September 29, 1933, say, “Began looking

over timberland for a proposed Experimental

Forest.” Wackerman joined in this search on

October 14 and 15. And, starting on October 18,

1933, Director Demmon of the Southern Station

looked over some of the possible areas (fig. 7).

After final decision on the Experimental

Forest location was made, first work of running

out boundary lines was started on October 21,

1933. Before this, the Southern Station had

carried on old-field pine growth and yield studies

in cooperation with the Urania Lumber Company

7
Fig&e 7.-E. L. Demmon, Director of the

Southern Forest Experiment Station at the time that the Crossett

Research Center was established.

at Urania, Louisiana, and considerable work on

planting and spacing of southern pine at

Bogalusa, Louisiana, in cooperation with the

Great Southern Lumber Company. The station

also had research on naval stores production and

problems underway at Lake City, Florida. But the

Crossett Research Center was to be the first U.S.

Forest Service branch research station in the

South.

The area to be developed into the Crossett

Experimental Forest contained mainly natural

stands of shortleaf and loblolly pine that had

developed unaided since the virgin timber had

been cut to a 14-inch stump diameter limit in

1915. Stocking varied greatly from acre to acre

from none to perhaps 5,600 bd. ft. (Doyle). Since

little or no hardwoods had been cut at the time of

the virgin-timber removal, nearly every acre had

hardwoods ranging in size from new reproduction

up to trees that were 24 inches in diameter. Many

of the big hardwoods were post oak that had been

in the virgin stands.

The Crossett Lumber Company gave the

Forest Service 1680 acres of timberland outright.

They reserved the timber but offered the

Government a deal: if the station should return to

the company in 20 years a volume of timber equal

to the volume on the area at the time of the

agreement, the land and the remaining timber

would become the property of the Government.

By the end of 1933, it was agreed by the

Director of the Southern Station that: (1) much of

the early research would be on ways and means of

improving and rebuilding the previously unmanaged second-growth stands, (2) the economics

branch of the station would, working under the

station director, have general control of

development of the research facility, and (3) the

day to day development and operation of the

branch station would be under my direction.

We soon agreed that, to have good fire

protection for the area as well as provide ready

access for research purposes, roads should crisscross the area at about half-mile intervals. To do

this without funds was the trick.

At the end of 1933, work projects were being

organized by the Government in order to give

employment to some of the unemployed in the

area around Crossett. The station applied for a

Civilian Work Project (C.W.P.) for the road work,

and this was approved December 16, 1933. Mr.

Wilcoxon, logging superintendent of the Crossett

Lumber Company, offered us three of his logging

camp supervisory force and Ike Rawls, one of the

camp log scalers who was to become timekeeper,

scaler, and in charge of tools. Ike soon became my

valued assistant, and he helped on the installation

Figure 8. -First building of the Crossett Experimental Forest

and Research Center. Building was used as tool

shed and office until permanent office and other

buildings were constructed. Building was built in

December 1933. Russ Reynolds shown by building.

8
of nearly every research study over the next 40

years.

We began building a temporary shed and

office on December 22, 1933, and started surveying and staking road lines (fig. 8). Also a

unique feature of the road construction was that

no machinery was available for the job-and none

was wanted by the C.W.P. officials. The objective

was to make use of the maximum amount of

manpower. Thus we planned to build the roads

entirely by hand-with shovels, picks, and axes.

Roads were built 20 feet wide from ditch to ditch.

We cut trees in the right-of-way flush with the

ground and threw dirt dug from the ditches

toward the center of the roadway in order to cover

up the stumps (fig. 9).

Men were selected from relief rolls from the

Crossett area and from as far away as Stillion on

the Saline River, where the closing of a mill had

stranded several families. Conditions were so

serious that the Stillion group had to walk 8 miles

down the Rock Island railroad to Crossett each

morning, leaving Stillion at about 4 a.m. We

would pick them up at the Crossett Filling Station

at 7 a.m. each day. The men would put in a lohour day. Then we transported them back to

Crossett, and they walked the eight miles back to

Stillion. They would arrive at Stillion at about 9

p.m. Here their families would have some eats

ready for them. They would later fall exhausted

into bed. Their wives would awaken them at 3

a.m. and they would start another long day. For

all of this the men were paid $1.25 per day for a 4-

day week.

Among the Stillion group was a black man by

the name of Jasper Burns, who had a stiff leg

caused by a mill injury to his knee. But stiff leg

and all, Jasper made the long walk twice a day in

Figure 9.-Start of road construction on the Crossett Experimental Forest. Road cutting across picture in immediate foreground

was the Crossett, Ark.-&strop, La. highway.
order to stay alive. Jasper became a valuable

permanent member of the Crossett Research staff

and worked for the Government until his

retirement many years later.

Word that the Crossett Lumber Company was

considering selection cutting of their last

remaining virgin and advanced second-growth

stands, and that the Southern Station had

marked the first 2,500 acres for partial cutting

spread throughout the country. Visitors by the

dozens began visiting Crossett to see the first

large-scale marking of timber on a selection basis,

and to see development of the proposed Forest

Research Center. My diary for May 26, 1934,

reads as follows:

“Went to Collingston, Louisiana, to pick up

Mr. Demmon (Director of the Southern Station)

and Mr. Watzek (one of the owners of the Crossett

Lumber Company). Talked over future plans with

Mr. Demmon in a.m. In p.m. with Mr. Silcox

Figure 10.-A. G. (Jahe) Jacobson, the Crossett Lumber

Company’s fourth Chief Forester, was responsible for establishment of the district forestry

system and for getting the Company through

many rough times-when they were attempting

to change from virgin timber to second-growth

management and harvesting.

(Chief of the U.S. Forest Service), Mr. Demmon,

Mr. Kircher (Regional Rorester R-8), Mr.

Watzek, Mr. Bryant (Prof. of Forest Utilization

at Yale University and consultant to the Crossett

Lumber Company), Mr. Trieschman (Member of

Crossett’s Board of Directors), Mr. Sonderegger

(State Forester of Louisiana), and Mr. Gillett

(State Forester of Arkansas), showing them the

East Block selection marking, and the work on

the Experimental Forest.”

And the diary for Wednesday, July 18, 1934,

reads: “With Wackerman and a Mr. McGowin

(Julian) of the W. T. Smith Lumber Company (of

Chapman, Alabama) whose company is thinking

of practicing sustained yield on their operations.”

But some of the Crossett officials still were not

satisfied that the second-growth pine stands they

proposed to log (along with the selectively marked

virgin timber) had enough volume per acre to

permit railroad logging. They, therefore, asked

the Forest Service to assist in updating the stand

and growth figures for their 146,000 acres of

second-growth in the so-called NE and NW

Blocks, located north of Hamburg and south of

Monticello. They also asked us to propose a

management and selective logging plan for the

area.

Pete Downey, forester for the company, was to

be in charge of the work. However, before the

evaluation was hardly underway, Downey

resigned and the work ‘was temporarily halted.

The company’s new forester arrived the first

week of November 1934. He was Albin G. (Jake)

Jacobson, a University of Michigan Forestry

School graduate of 1929 (fig. 10). He was immediately assigned to the company’s cutover land

study.

Early in 1935, the stand and growth data had

been brought up to date. Average pine stand per

acre on the 146,000 acres was as follows:

Volume 10” d.b.h. and above - 2,100 bd. ft.

Doyle scale

Volume 12” d.b.h. and above - 1,852 bd. ft.

Doyle scale

Volume 13” d.b.h. and above - 1,680 bd. ft.

Doyle scale

Volume 14” d.b.h. and above - 1,461 bd. ft.

Doyle scale

Volume 15” d.b.h. and above - 1,222 bd. ft.

Doyle scale

At that time, we determined that at least

2,500 bd. ft. (Doyle) would be needed to make a

railroad logging operation profitable. The size of

logs that would be needed was unknown at the

time, but it was quite obvious that logs produced

10
Figure ll.- Original office building at the CrossettResearch Center Headquarters located about 8 miles south of Crossett, Ark.,

on the Crossett-Bostrop highway. Photo made in summer 1935.

from trees 10 to 12 inches d.b.h. would be very

costly, especially if produced under a railroad

operation.

To put it mildly, the company had doubts

about the future of the sawmill business at

Crossett. To attempt to make a go of it, they had

agreed to a proposal to reduce their pine lumber

production.

MEANWHILE-BACK AT THE

FUTURE RESEARCH CENTER

Meanwhile, progress was being made at the

future Research Center, but under considerable

difficulty. Nearly all of the Southern Station staff

were in favor of developing a headquarters area

with office and housing for some of the technical

and supervisory force. Also needed were

telephones and electric service, additional road

construction, graveling, and other improvements.

But extremely little money was available for

doing the work. By present day standards, when,

with not too much effort, funds can be had for the

building and equipping of a laboratory costing a

million dollars, it seems amazing that the station

could only find funds to build a small office and a

small pump house. These were board and batten

buildings with rough drop siding on the outside

and knotty pine paneling on the inside. The office

was built up on blocks with a crawl space underneath. It had a fireplace and a small bathroom.

Construction of the office and pumphouse began

in August 1934 and was completed in about 3

weeks, at a total cost of $2,400 (fig. 11).

On September 24, 1934, work had begun on

buildings to be used as winter quarters by the

CCC crew, who was helping on a loo-percent

inventory of timber on the Experimental Forest.

Location stakes for a house, a filling station, and

a four-car garage were set.

1 1
For other improvements, we had to scheme

and beg and do the work with our own hands (fig.

12). We used the small crew of CCC boys from the

Hamburg camp, not only to make the loo-percent

inventory of trees on the new Experimental

Forest, but to help survey the forty and compartment lines on the forest. They also helped drill

a water well at the headquarters area, and cut

brush from the fire lines that were to be constructed at quarter-mile intervals throughout the

forest.

By the end of 1934, much of the 13 miles of

pick-and-shovel-built F.E.R.A. (Federal

Emergency Relief Administration) roads were

completed, and some of them had received a thin

layer of gravel that we had loaded and unloaded

by hand from a gravel pit 5 miles away.

The F.E.R.A. came to an end, but it was

succeeded by the W.P.A. (Works Progress

Administration). We obtained a project and a

small allotment of funds for work on the Experimental Forest on July 29, 1935. The W.P.A.

administration allowed us to “hire” some men

with carpentry, log construction, and other skills,

along with the allotment of those with only

- common laborer experience. The W.P.A. administration also provided us with a small amount

of money to purchase needed lumber, nails, and

other materials.

Since long pine poles of 10 to 12 inches butt

diameter and with a little taper could be had for

$1.00 and less per pole (if we did the cutting,

peeling, and hauling) we decided to construct a

custodian cabin and bathhouse, a superintendent’s house,a forester’s residence, a four-car

garage, and a filling station, out of logs. Rafters

were made out of small, round pine poles. Roofs

were covered with cypress shakes produced by our

crew from old, generally hollow, cypress trees

given to us by the Crossett Lumber Company.

Pieces of 2 x 4’s and 2 x 6’s were set against the

logs on the inside of the rooms and pieces of

knotty pine paneling were nailed to these. Dried,

dressed #3 (knotty) boards were obtained for

$17.50 per M bd. ft. If such boards were selected

for sound knots, the price was $22.50 per M bd. ft.

And if each side of the board was bevelled so as to

produce a “V” joint when construction was

completed, the cost was $27.50 per M bd. ft. (fig.

13).

In those days power tools were not available,

so all cutting of the trees and logs for the

buildings had to be accomplished by the use of

two-man crosscut saws and axes. Fitting of the

logs at the corners of the buildings had to be done

by trial and error by the use of axes and large

chisels. Concrete for supporting walls and cellars

had to be mixed by hand in 4 x 8 feet troughs,

with gravel and sand loaded, hauled, and screened

by our crews from local pits.

Construction of the various log buildings

started on September 30, 1935, and was largely

completed by the middle of the summer of 1936.

To give one an idea about “building without

money,” by far the most expensive of the construction jobs was the forester’s residence (fig. 14).

This was a 50 x 58 feet (inside measurement) Hshaped house with a basement, hot-water heating

system, and fine hardwood floors in most rooms.

Total cost of all logs for the house was $108

(standing tree value), and total cost of the house

was less than $7,000, including labor. Except for a

small amount of architectural and supervisory

help, the total cost of all these original log

buildings to the Southern Station was only a few

hundred dollars.

As this construction work was getting underway in summer 1935, the director of the

Southern Station, the division chiefs, and some of

the research personnel had a final meeting to

agree on the assignment of research study areas

on the Experimental Forest. The result was that

80 acres was to be left untouched as a “Natural

Area”; 30 acres was for a native tree Arboretum

(fig. 15); 80 acres was for farm forestry studies;

280 acres was to be set aside for small plot, “test

tube”, or fundamental studies; 880 acres was for

large compartment studies; and 330 acres was for

administrative use and for later assignment.

MORE GROWING PAINS

The winter of 1934-35 was not unusually cold,

but we learned that, though fireplaces are nice to

look at, they are not exactly the way to heat an

office. Especially if much inside work is to be

done. So we talked someone into providing

enough money for a small, wood- and coalburning, circulating, gravity-flow, hot-water

furnace. The only thing wrong with that was that

we needed a cellar for it. But that didn’t stop us.

1 2
Figure 12.-First staff of Crossett Experimental Forest in March 1938.

Left to right they are A. G. Williams, Edwin Hughes,

Lucille Futhey, and Russ Reynolds.

Figure 13.- Mid-construction of the resident forester’s building at the Crossett Research Center.

Is it likely to ever make a house?

13
Some of us began acting like moles, and with

short-handled shovels we crawled under the office

and started digging a cellar without disturbing

the footings of the building. In short order we had

our forms in and concrete mixed and poured. We

bought used pipe and radiators and, before the

end of January, we had lots of wonderful heat.

We had no money for coal to fire the furnace,

but we did have an unlimited supply of good

hardwood for the cutting. So, we used wood.

Unfortunately, though, the fire had to be stoked

at midnight and at about 4 a.m. if we were to have

a warm building when it was time for the office

staff to go to work in the morning. As the boss, I

would not dare ask someone else to do the

nighttime stoking of the furnace, so I did it at the

same time that I fed the furnace in the big house.

But in those days one had to do many “extra”

jobs in order to keep the project going.

There was no problem getting all the female

W.P.A. help we needed for work on the mass of

time-study and yield data collected on the Pack

Selective Logging Study-if we had some tables,

chairs, and desks. We learned that the Veterans

Hospital at Alexandria had some used office

furniture that they were willing to give us. To this

we added two large tables that we built from glued

sections of 1 inch x 1% inches x 8 feet red oak,

white oak, and post oak. These were massive and

heavy tables but beautiful when sanded,

smoothed, and finished with natural varnish.

They were still around in 1970.

THE BEGINNING OF PARTIAL

CUTTING ON CROSSETT LANDS

The cutting of selectively marked virgin

timber in the Crossett Company’s East Block

began in 1935. It was done under the same

railroad logging system as was used when the

virgin timber was clearcut. However, with the

reduced harvest per acre the costs increased. By

mid-1935 the company had also started some

railroad logging of its second-growth in selected

stands. Here, too, the low volumes of logs

available per acre and the small size of logs caused

production costs to skyrocket.

The company had begun making contracts

with a few log contractors for the cutting of

marked timber for delivery by trucks to the

company’s East Block main line railroad and to

landings on the A.D.&N. Railroad at Monticello,

Lacy, Fountain Hill, and Pugh, Arkansas.

Figure 14.-The completed house in 1937. It had a 18 ft. x 25 ft. living room, a 16 ft. x 18 ft.

dining room, a large kitchen, two bedrooms and a sleeping porch, a bath, a laundry

room, and a cellar. (FS 350851).

14
Figure 15.-Planting tree arboretum on the Crossett Experimental Forest during the spring of

1935. Timber stand in the background is typical of the unmanaged second-growth

stands that werepresent on the forest when research began in 1935.

THE FIRST USE OF

TRACTORS FOR SKIDDING

Until this time, all skidding of logs at Crossett

and in the region was accomplished with the use of

horses, mules, and oxen. Between late spring and

late fall it was usually possible for trucks to drive

directly to the logs in the woods, so the teams

only had to bunch one or more loads in a spot. In

wet weather, however, trucks had to stay on the

very few hard surface roads, and skidding had to

be to these roads. With railroad logging where

there were logs of up to 500 bd. ft. each, skidding

an average one-eighth of a mile was a real

problem, any time of the year, even though twowheel “bummers” were used to carry the front end

of the logs. During long periods of wet winter

weather it was almost an impossibility. Tractors

for use in skidding logs in the woods were unheard

of.

At this time the Caterpillar Tractor Company

had crawler tractors that were sold for use around

building projects. Since the log skidding problem

was a universal one, it was thought that tractors

of this type might be used for winter logging and,

in fact, anywhere that skidding distances were

long at any time of year. Consequently, after

several conferences and planning sessions, we

decided to undertake a tractor skidding study in

the East Block area, where logs would be skidded

to a railroad landing. It was a time and cost study

to determine the number and volume of logs of the

different sizes that the tractors could carry per

trip. We also computed the cost per M bd. ft. for

different distances of up to a half-mile. The study

got underway in the spring of 1936 with Robert

Worthington of the Southern Forest Experiment

Station in charge. He used a crew of CCC boys to

collect the necessary time and volume data.

The first of April was the date chosen for the

start of the study since this is the time of the year

when soil conditions are less firm and skidding of

logs the most difficult. However, April 1936

happened to be one of these rare spring months

when ground conditions were good and there was

very little rain. Nevertheless, the study was

undertaken as planned.

15
Relatively small RD-4 tractors were the first

ones tested. It soon became apparent that, under

dry conditions and for short distances, teams of

horses or mules could skid logs at a cheaper rate

than the tractors. It was also true that, for

distances greater than about 400 feet, tractor

skidding cost per M bd. ft. increased sharply with

distance. This seemed to be true largely because

the small tractors could not carry enough volume

of standard length (12-20 foot) logs.

In an attempt to solve this problem it was

decided to produce long logs (24 feet to tree

length) with the stems bucked to regular length at

the concentration point (or landing) next to the

Company railroad. This reduced costs somewhat

but not nearly enough.

Next, it seemed that larger tractors might be

desirable and cheaper, per M bd. ft., because of

their greater power. So two tractors, an RD-6 and

an RD-7, were shipped in for study. They could

and did pull a much larger load of tree length logs,

especially when skidding pans or arches were used

to carry the front end of the logs off the ground.

Another important finding was that the

skidding cost varied with the size of the average

tree or log, partly because of the volume of the

average load that could be carried and partly

because of the extra time required to assemble a

load of small logs.

Finally, we found that under no set of conditions could the tractors tested skid logs a

distance of one half mile or more at an acceptable

cost.

Later studies under winter or wet weather

conditions, when soil moisture was high, indicated that tractors could be depended upon to

move logs from stump to loading point when team

skidding was impossible. Also, tractors could be

stuck and almost buried on certain soils, requiring

much loss of production while they were being dug

out. Nevertheless, tractors were in the woods to

stay.

A FULL-BLOWN CRISIS DEVELOPS

While all these projects and studies were

underway, a full-blown crisis developed at the

Crossett Lumber Company. The Company was

still operating in the “red” at the end of 1935, and

Company directors told Mr. Arnold (the general

manager) that, unless he could get the Company

Figure 16.- Ouachita River bottomland in July 1937. This is a typical virgin hardwood stand

of Tensas Delta country of Arkansas and Louisiana, overmature and defective.

(FS350894).

16
operating,profitably before the year was out, the

directors would have to change managers-and

perhaps some other personnel.

Mr. Arnold in turn called in Albin Jacobson

and said, “you damn foresters got us into this

mess, now you had better get us out.” Jacobson

had a good idea as to what the trouble might be,

but he asked the Director of the Southern Station

for help in solving the problems. The Director

ordered “all steam ahead.” Because it was a

hardwood log utilization problem as well as a pine

log problem, the Director asked John Putnam,

hardwood expert for the Station, and myself to

assist Jacobson.

First, the hardwood utilization problem was

tackled. The company had some years earlier,

purchased a considerable acreage of virgin

Ouachita River bottom hardwood land located in

the flood plain adjacent to and east of the river

(fig. 16). The site was quite poor. Most of the

volume was overcup oak, and the trees, although

of good size, contained only about 1% logs per tree.

Mineral stainwas quite common in the wood. The

company had overestimated the volume and

quality present on the area, and was attempting

to make up for this by cutting and sawmilling

many logs of doubtful value.

Based on Putnam’s knowledge of quality

yields of lumber to be had from logs of various

sizes and grades, and on observation of grade

yields in the mill, a considerable volume of

Ouachita River bottom logs that were banked

along the company’s logging railroad were

classified into three grades. Class 1 logs were

those that obviously would be profitable to log

and mill. Class 3 logs were those that obviously

were unprofitable because of rot, large knots,

small size, and other reasons. Class 2 logs were

those that were questionable as to profitability.

Many logs from each class were sawmilled,

and we recorded the lumber volume and grade.

We also recorded the sawmill time per M bd. ft. of

lumber yield. We determined logging and milling

costs for logs of each class and subtracted this

amount from the green chain value of the lumber.

The end product was a figure representing net

return per M bd. ft.

From the above study, we determined that the

company was making a good profit on the Class 1

logs. It was breaking even or making a small

profit on most of the Class 2 logs, but it was

losing so much money on the Class 3 logs that the

whole operation was unprofitable.

The problem was solved by the establishment

of hardwood utilization standards for log

production. Logs of various species, or species

groups, had to have a certain size and log grade

before they would be cut and brought out of the

woods. The hardwood logging and milling was

apparently never a very profitable operation, but

this study and follow-up put it into the black.

After a short review of the pine operation, it

appeared that the red ink in the financial

statement was, like the hardwood problem,

largely the result of too many unprofitable logs

being brought into the sawmill. To try and

produce the large volume of logs necessary to keep

the two large mills running, the woods division

was scratching for all the logs they could get. In

marking of the East Block virgin timber, trees

with heartrot and others that were very limby and

low grade, along with many very high-grade

trees, were spotted and later cut for logs. Many of

the trees with hear-trot yielded large logs but

generally with only a thin layer of solid wood

toward the outside. The rest of the cross section

had rot in various stages, and from this only

unprofitable Grade 4 lumber could be produced.

Many logs from the tops of high quality trees and

from the whole stems of very limby trees produced

logs with very large knots, and often boards with

loose knots.

In cutting the marked and unmarked secondgrowth stands, many small logs were produced,

as well as many logs with large knots. The Pack

Selective Logging Study-and the follow-up millscale-study-produced yield, cost, and lumber

value data for the various sizes and grades of such

logs. A summary of this data gave all the information needed to indicate what kind of logs

would be profitable and what kind unprofitable for

sawmilling at Crossett.

Little data, however, were available on lumber

out-turn from the large rotten-core logs from the

virgin stands. We ran a mill-scale study of a

representative sample of such logs to determine

the amount of defect that the logs could have

before becoming unprofitable. A similar test was

also run on top and rough logs to determine

characteristics of the unprofitable ones.

From these studies, utilization instructions

were prepared to help those who were responsible

for log production keep most unprofitable logs out

of the sawmill.

The application of such standards meant that

many of the smaller and the rougher logs from

17
Figure 17.- Low quality hardwoods, most of which had been left at the time that the virgin

timber was cut 15 years earlier, had taken over this pine site on the Crossett Experimental Forest by 1935. (FS 3509231.

small trees could no longer be used in the

relatively slow, and relatively expensive, mills

that had been designed for operation on large

virgin logs. Much of the upper stem of the larger

second-growth trees also had to be left in the

woods.

FIRST RESEARCH ON THE CROSSETT

EXPERIMENTAL FOREST

As has been indicated earlier, the secondgrowth pine-hardwood stands present on the new

Experimental Forest contained many hickory and

red, water, post, and white oak. Some of the post

oak and a few of the other species were as large as

24 inches in diameter. Because of past fires, many

large trees contained rotten centers, but a few

were of the right grade and size to make merchantable logs. The hardwoods generally occurred

singly, or two and three together, and interspaced

among the pine. In many places, however, there

would be an almost solid stand of hardwood, up to

an acre in size, with pine reproduction, seedlings,

and saplings underneath (fig. 17).

If we were to intensify management of the

stands and increase yields and returns, we

somehow would have to reduce greatly the hardwood component of the forest. The use of hardwood for pulpwood in those days was unheard of.

Many people burned hardwood for heating and

cooking, but there was little market for the wood.

If a person needed some wood he could have an

unlimited amount from company land just for the

cutting.

Fortunately, Crossett had a so-called

“charcoal plant” that had been built to use cutoffs

and trimmings from their hardwood sawmill.

Because of trouble with uniform carbonization of

this material, they had started using small round

and split sections from the trees in the woods. The

sections were 52 inches long, and could not be

over 5 inches across on any face. In those days it

was said jokingly that the company “would take

any .hardwood species- as long as it was oak and

as long as the piece contained few, if any, knots.”

But the cutting of “chemicalwood” provided a

market for some of the unwanted hardwoods (fig.

18).

Because of this, our first “study” undertaken

on the Experimental Forest dealt with improvement cutting. The Crossett Lumber

Company had agreed to take all of the chemicalwood we wished to produce, so we decided to

determine how much of the product the previously

unmanaged stands would yield per acre, how

18
much it would cost to produce the product, and

how many trees unsuitable for chemicalwood we

would have to girdle. We acquired a couple of used

1% -ton trucks and built chemicalwood racks on

the back of each. We then picked several men out

of our E.R.A. crew with woods experience, and

went, to work on the several compartments that

had been marked previously for the study. In

those days the market price for chemicalwood was

$2.25 per “unit” (52 inches wide x 4 feet high x 8

feet long) of wood delivered to the chemicalwood

yard in Crossett. We did not make a lot of money,

but we put a lot of hungry men to work and we

greatly improved the growing conditions and pine

stocking on the areas treated. Later we applied

the practice to nearly all the Experimental Forest

that was to be used for compartment studies.

DEVELOPMENT OF A

MARKET FOR PULPWOOD

Two kraft paper mills had been built at

Bastrop, Louisiana, in the 1920’s, and both used

pine for raw material. However, their

requirements were relatively small and could

easily be met locally. The Crossett area had no

market for its pine or its hardwood from trees that

needed to be removed in thinnings, or from tops of

trees that had been cut for logs.

It is not known when Crossett Company officials started thinking about the possibility of

building a pulpmill in order to use this material.

But it was possibly by 1933 when the company’s

forestry program started to take shape. By June

7, 1935, the discussions had gotten to the point

that they engaged Spain and Company, Consultation Foresters, of Memphis, Tennessee, to

make a check cruise of their pine timberlands to

determine how much material might be available

to a mill.

By February 1936, a secured loan from the

Reconstruction Finance Corporation had been

approved, largely because it would provide

employment for many unemployed men in the

area. Construction plans had been nearly completed for a 150-ton kraft mill, and the location for

the mill had been chosen (fig. 19).

Things were stepping right along. My diary

for Sunday, February 16, 1936, reports, “Spent

the day with Director Demmon inspecting the

Experimental Forest and the Experimental Forest

buildings that were under construction. Inspected

the Improvement Cutting study on the forest and

looked over suggested pine pulpwood thinning

study areas. Also looked over some of the

Company’s selective logging and the site for the

new pulpmill.”

In the western part of the shortleaf-loblollyupland hardwood type, in Arkansas, Louisiana,

Mississippi, and Texas, about 5 to 10 percent of

the forest area was made up of dense, even-aged

loblolly or loblolly-shortleaf pine stands. A few of

such stands resulted from a severe fire or windstorm.

However, by far the most were “oldfield”

Figure 18.- Hardwood “chemicalwood” stacked in the woods for drying.
stands. In the early years of farming, the owners

of the farms would clear a patch of 5 to 20 acres of

trees and brush, and plant the cleared patch to

corn or cotton or other crops. Commercial fertilizers were unheard of, and the natural fertility

of the fields would be reduced from year to year.

After so long a time, the owner would clear up

another field or two and abandon the worn-out

fields. Generally pine seed from the surrounding

forest would be blown into the abandoned

patches, and a dense stand of young pine would

result.

Until 1935 or thereabouts, there was much

question as to whether these oldfield stands were

a blessing or a hindrance. In most localities there

was no such thing as a market for pulpwood. And

there was only a very limited market for treated

pine fence posts. If the owner wished to use such

areas for grazing, he had the task of clearing the

abandoned fields of the pine saplings and the new

stems that continued to come in from natural

seeding. If the owner of such thick patches of

oldfield pine did nothing to them and the stands

escaped a serious fire, as many trees as could

. survive the severe competition (among one

another) would eventually reach pulpwood size.

And finally many would reach small sawlog size.

But such stands still had little or no value.

Until about 1938, an individual (if he had the

money and a strong enough belief in the future)

could have purchased hundreds of thousands of

acres of such stands, with the equivalent of up to

35 cords of pulpwood per acre, for $5~$6 per acre.

At one time I purchased 640 acres of such stands

with loblolly pine of pulpwood size as thick as

“hair on a dog” for $6 per acre. This included cost

of land, the trees, and all mineral rights.

When many of the trees in such oldfield stands

approached sawlog size, it was customary for the

nearest sawmill owner to purchase such stands

under a 20- to 30-year “timber deed.” This meant

that the purchaser would make an estimate of the

volume of log-size material on the property and

then get the owner to give the company 20 or more

years in which to cut the stand. The price per M

bd. ft. was often not more than $2.50. Because the

estimated volume was based on Doyle scale and

the sawtimber trees were small, the volume paid

for amounted to very little. The purchasers of

such stands would usually wait until the last year

of the timber deed before cutting the stand. The

result was that the purchaser would usually cut 2

to 10 times the volume and value that was paid for

in the earlier years. Too, over the 20- to 30-year

period, the owner of the land would pay the yearly

taxes on the property-and he was expected to

also keep fire and trespassers out of the timber

stands .

GROWTH AND YIELD TABLESCONCEPTS

The dense oldfield stands did have a useful

place in the scheme of things. Shortly after the

Southern Forest Experiment Station came into

being in 1921, researchers had begun collecting

data for the construction of growth and yield

tables for fully stocked stands of the four principal

species of southern pine- loblolly , longleaf,

shortleaf, and slash. At the time, and even into

the middle 1930’s, “fully stocked” meant all the

trees that one could have growing on a given area,

(‘;n a given site, at a given time. For instance, it

was assumed that a fully stocked stand of loblolly

pine growing on an 85-foot site should have about

140 square feet of basal area at 30 years of age,

because stands could be found with this amount of

stocking. This concept was undoubtedly imported

from Europe at the same time that the first

European foresters came to the United States. In

any event, work at the Southern Station resulted

in a quite famous U.S. Department of

Agriculture-Forest Service publication. It was

known as Miscellaneous Publication No. 50. It

presented the first comprehensive growth and

yield figures for fully stocked stands of the four

major southern pines. Such information was

based on stand age and tree height or log length.

Stands of these pines that had basal areas less

than that shown in the tables were considered

understocked. Furthermore, in those days most

foresters thought that the growing stock in

“understocked” stands should be built up to this

full volume in order to obtain maximum growth.

This was held to be true for board-foot as well as

for cubic-foot values.

Another interesting concept that held sway

until the mid-1930’s was that board-foot growth

and cubic-foot growth per acre per year was

directly related to percent of full stocking. If the

stocking of a given stand was 50 percent of the full

stocking, as shown in the growth and yield tables,

the cubic- or board-foot volume growth would be

50 percent of the values for fully stocked stands.

20
JIM GIRARD was positive that the growth would be greater

than this. After many conferences and harsh

A few of us foresters did not agree with such a words on the subject, Jim proposed a study of

concept but it was James W. (Jim) Girard, a pine growth in relation to stocking. This was

nonforester and nonresearcher, who proved that finally agreed to and was conducted in ponderosa

the idea was erroneous. Jim, who had been a pine stands of various stocking in Montana in

timber cruiser and logging engineer in the western about 1935.

forests, had been hired by the U.S. Forest Service Results of the study conclusively proved that

to help the Assistant Director of the National Jim was right and that it was possible to have,

Forest Survey. Almost immediately, Jim clashed say, 60 percent of maximum growth in stands

with the Director and other high-level with only 40 percent of full stocking as shown by

Washington personnel in charge of the Survey. the growth and yield tables. This finding was later

They had intended to publish data on the stocking proved correct at the Crossett Research Center

and growth of an area of Florida’s timberland (as I and elsewhere, and led to the use of incrementremember it) that had been inventoried by the core and permanent sample-plot studies to

Survey staff. Stocking per acre was only about 30 determine actual growth in understocked stands.

percent of that shown in the Miscellaneous It was also the reason that loo-percent repeat

Publication #50 growth and yield tables, so the inventories were insisted upon in later compoint was to be made in the survey report that the partment and small-plot studies undertaken at

growth was only 30 percent of normal. the Crossett Research Center.

Jim would not accept such a statement. He This same Jim Girard was the idea man for the

Figure 19.- The Crossettpulp andpaper mills-built in 1937 to utilize small trees removed in thinning and tops of sawlog trees.

21
form-class volume tables he later developed in

collaboration with Clement Mesavage, who at the

time was on the staff of the Southern Forest

Experiment Station. The first such publication

had the title, “Tables for Estimating Board-Foot

Volumes of Timber.” For some unknown reason

the publication was not given a number and was

marked “For Administrative Use.” It was never

published for general use. The Southern Forest

Experiment Station in 1947 did publish “Tables

for Estimating Cubic-Foot Volume of Timber” by

Clement Mesavage, which was based on the

Girard form-class idea. Both Girard and

Mesavage were disappointed that the Forest

Service didn’t publicly accept the Girard formclass tables and recommend them for general use.

THE PULPWOOD THINNING STUDY

Because of the initiation of a market for

pulpwood, and because of the very slow diameter

growth of trees on most of the heavily stocked

oldfield (and some natural forest) stands, it

seemed desirable to determine the effect of

thinning in stands of this type. Thus, after much

- thought and planning, the second study to be

undertaken at the Center was one on pulpwood

thinning. It was begun on June 11, 1936. The

objective was to determine the present and future

yields, returns, and cost when: (1) about 200 of

the best trees were reserved per acre on a spacing

of 15 x 15 feet; (2) about 100 of the best trees were

reserved on a spacing of 21 x 21 feet; (3) 70 of the

best trees were reserved on a spacing of 25 x 25

feet; (4) 40 of the best trees were reserved on a

spacing of 33 x 33 feet. In each case, trees smaller

than 6 inches d.b.h. were not counted as crop

trees and were allowed to remain on the plots.

At the time, to counter severe criticism of clearcutting, the Southern Pulpwood Association had

a cutting “rule” that it urged its members to use.

The association further urged its members to

purchase pulpwood only from dealers, contractors, and timberland owners who cut in a

manner that would equal, or be better than, the

standard adopted. The minimum standard for

pine pulpwood was to “leave all trees up to and

including 7.5 inches d.b.h. and leave one 9.5-inch

or larger tree every 50 feet.” Such a treatment was

included in the study. Also, uncut check plots

were included, making six treatments in all. The

study was undertaken in a 44-year-old oldfield

stand with an average basal area of about 140

square feet per acre.

We found that the most net-cubic-foot growth

for the first 10 years was on the plots thinned back

to 200 trees per acre. The most board-foot growth

was about the same on plots thinned back to 200

and 100 trees per acre, with the plots thinned back

to 70 trees per acre not far behind. The uncut

check plots were far behind in both net cubic and

board foot growth.

- - **

Figure 20. -The famous Rose Inn at Crossett, Ark., 1934.

22
SMALL-TOWN LIVING

Up until July 9, 1936, I and Geneva, my wife,

lived in Crossett-first at the Rose Inn and then

in a house on the southwest corner of the intersection of what is now Cedar Street and Third

Avenue. The house was set aside for rental to

Southern Station personnel.

The Rose Inn was a large three-story wooden

structure with open walk-up stairways (fig. 20). It

was Company owned and provided the only public

overnight housing in town. It had a large lobby

with a big fireplace and a long row of rocking

chairs. Another long row of such chairs adorned

the long, covered front porch. Rooms on the third

floor were reserved for unmarried school teachers,

who were required to live there. Not too much

space was required since there was only one white

and one black school in town. Crossett was very

much off the main roads. In those days the rooms

on the second floor usually could take care of

visiting lumber company officials, plus two or

three of the single men who worked for the

company and did not have other housing. It also

accommodated an occasional salesman and other

visitors.

The large Rose Inn dining room, always with

sparkling white tablecloths on the tables and

waiters with white jackets, was famous for its

good food. For many years, men had to wear ties

and coats before they were admitted to the room.

To be reasonably sure that those who came

without proper attire could have something to eat,

Mr. Boardman, the hotel manager, kept a supply

of extra coats and ties on a clothes tree just

outside the room.

Geneva and I were allowed to live and eat at

the hotel on a monthly rate that was similar to the

one paid by the other regulars-$30 each per

month. This included steak every night, if one

wanted it, and always plenty of hot biscuits and

many choices of potatoes and vegetables.

Crossett was strictly a lumber company town

with all of the houses built, maintained, and

owned by the Company (fig. 21). The houses were

all built up off the ground on brick or concrete

piers with plenty of crawl space underneath for

the installation of piping and for reducing the

problem of termites (fig. 22). No insulation of any

kind was used, so the houses were very drafty

and cold in winter. All buildings were painted the

same color and many looked alike so one learned

to know his house by some distinguishing feature

in the yard. No yard was complete without a

servant’s quarters in back, and most homes

“enjoyed” outside toilets.

Because of the low wages paid (by sawmills in

general, including Crossett) , most families kept

cows and chickens to help make ends meet. There

was no such thing as a stock law in those days.

So, after milking time in the morning, the cows

were turned out of each back yard to hunt for

grass and other vegetation to eat during the day.

Several people owned horses and pigs, and there

were even a few mules. These, along with the

cows, roamed at will up and down the streets

Figure 21.- Main street of Crossett, Ark., 1934.

23
including the area that might be considered

“downtown.” Most streets in town were unpaved,

although some had a weak covering of gravel and

blacktop. In wet weather, one had to try to dodge

not only mud puddles but also cowpiles and other

“offcasts.” In dry weather, it was just the latter.

Because of the roaming livestock, all yards

were enclosed by a wooden picket fence. Wooden

picket gates had a large barndoor, butterfly hinge

mounted horizontally at the top to keep it closed.

To open the gate, one would flip one half of the

hinge back on the other half. The grass in the

yards always seemed to be greener than that

outside the fence-to the livestock at least-and

many people had some tasty garden vegetables.

Thus, as one could expect, if a given gate was not

locked by the hinge, or if someone left it open, the

householder would more than likely have a yard

full of livestock in no time. Occasionally even the

hinge “lock” on the gates was not enough to

protect the yards from grazing animals. There

was one old cow, with only one short crooked

horn, that was smarter than 99 percent of all

animals in the country. She learned that if she

would turn her head sideways she could push her

short, little crooked horn under the hinge and flip

it over. Then she could pull the gate toward her

and thus open it-and walk in. After watching her

pull her trick a few times-especially after losing

some of our garden to her-we, and many of our

neighbors, installed more foolproof locks on the

gates.

One night Geneva and I were awakened in the

middle of the night by a constant tinkling of a

bell. After trying to go back to sleep without

success, we realized that somehow we would have

to get rid of the noisemaker. Geneva had purchased a sack of potatoes, of good size, the day

before so I appropriated three and went out the

side door toward the noise. As I did, I suddenly

realized that we were in the midst of a pea-soup

fog that was so dense one could not make out a

shape more than 10 feet away. I carefully headed

down the back door steps and toward the tinkling

bell. When I reached the yard fence, I let fly with

a potato toward what seemed to be the middle of

the animal. The potato found its mark and hit

with considerable “plop.” The slow “ding-ding”

immediately turned into a rapid “ding-ding-ding”

and two or three horses or mules took off up the

street. About this time from across the narrow

street in the next yard came “tee-bee-hee” and

then “haw-haw-haw.” It was the voice of Mr.

Arnold, manager of the Crossett Lumber Company. He and Mrs. Arnold had been awakened by

the same bell and he was also out in his yard

trying to decide what to do about the bell. After a

good laugh together, we both went back to bed

and let someone up the street worry about what to

do about the bell. To this day I have wondered

Figure 22. - The Reynolds residence in Crossett from 1934 to 1936, a typical Crossett house at the time.

24
what would have happened if I had missed the

mule with the potato and hit Mr. Arnold!

What sidewalks there were in town were

wooden, and although these were kept in pretty

good repair one always had to watch for a broken

or rotten board when walking thereon.

There was only one store in town and this

was-you guessed it-the “company store.” It

was located on the corner of what is now Highway

82 and Main Street. It was a large rambling

wooden building with a second-story mezzanine

all around the large main floor. The store had

many departments, including groceries, hardware, clothing, and furniture. If one wanted drugs

or ice cream, such items could be had by

descending two steps into an attached separate

room.

All sawmill and woods employees were encouraged to trade at the company “sto.” And to

help bring this about the workers could draw one

week’s pay in advance, but this was in the form of

coupon books that were good only at this store.

The Company owned all the land in town and an

area of about 2 square miles surrounding. And,

except for the railroad buildings and Western

Union, no other private enterprise was allowed.

Those who wished to establish a business had to

purchase land outside the village limits. It was

because of this that North Crossett, West

Crossett, and South Crossett came into being.

Prices in the stores in these places often were a bit

cheaper than in the company store, and those who

could resist the temptation of “borrowing”

against next week’s pay could have cash to trade

in the outlying communities.

Because the company owned all houses and

other buildings, and would only rent, it could

readily determine who would occupy each house.

They would rent only to those who worked at the

mills or offices, plus the few exceptions like

Geneva and me who worked for the Forest Service. Thus, there was no unemployment in town.

And very little crime and drinking. If an employee

did not produce at his job or caused any trouble,

out of town he would go.

Although pay in the sawmill and woods was

not large, the cost of rental living quarters was

very reasonable. Rates ranged from $5 to $17 per

month for most houses. And one could buy a

refrigerator or stove on “time” at the company

store at a very low rate per month. One could also

obtain all the wood he wanted for heating and

cooking just for the cutting on company lands.

RESEARCH STUDIES MULTIPLY

Although Geneva and I enjoyed our Crossett

living, July 9, 1936, was a big day in our lives. By

this date, construction of the big log “Forester’s

Home” at the Branch Station headquarters,

located 7 miles south of town, was far enough

along for us to move in (fig. 14). And move in we

did, with joy. This was to be our home for the next

33 years, in spite of many attempts to move us

back to New Orleans, or to other locations, so that

we would have more contact with other scientists

and “would not go to seed,” as some of the

Washington Office staff called it.

Meanwhile, the building program was winding

down. Office work on compilation of data from the

Pack Selective Cutting Study was expanding,

both in Crossett and in New Orleans. Based on

data from the Pack study, local cubic-foot and

board-foot volume tables were constructed. And I

somehow found time to write an article for the

Southern Lumberman entitled, “Good Forestry is

Good Business.” I also wrote one for the Southern

Pine Association, titled “Good Lumber From

Second-Growth Southern Pine,” the first of many

articles.

The year 1937 was a banner year on the

Crossett Experimental Forest (fig. 23). A lOOpercent inventory of all trees by size and species

was completed for the 1680 acres. After much

thought and planning, we undertook a Method-ofCutting Study. This was to compare the yields,

costs, returns, and the type of stands that would

develop from four different methods of cutting in

the previously unmanaged second-growth

shortleaf-loblolly pine-upland hardwood stands.

Three plots, each 2.5 acres in size surrounded by a

‘&acre isolation strip, were selected for each of

four treatments:

Method 1: This involved clearcutting for

sawlogs of all pine and hardwood trees 12 inches

d.b.h. and larger, and for pulpwood of all pine

trees 6 inches d,b.h. and larger up to sawlog size.

Pulpwood was also cut from tops of sawlog trees.

Hardwoods that were unmerchantable for sawlogs

were either cut into chemicalwood or deadened.

Such a method of treating stands was to represent

a common type of treatment given the shortleafloblolly pine-hardwood stands by many timberland owners in the South.

Method 2: All pine and hardwood trees 12

inches d. b . h. and larger were clearcut for sawlogs.

No pine pulpwood or hardwood chemicalwood was

25
cut except from tops of sawlog trees. Unmerchantable hardwoods were deadened or cut

into chemicalwood.

Method 3: This was a shelter-wood cuttingcutting all merchantable trees except 15-20 per

acre of the best quality pines that were 12 inches

d.b.h. and larger. Remainder of treatment was

same as in Method 1. This treatment was to

represent a third step in intensity of treatment for

the formerly unmanaged second-growth upland

stands.

Method 4: This was a selection cutting-to be

repeated on the same areas every 7 years. About

75 percent of the expected cubic-foot growth for 7

years would be removed at the time of each cut.

Cut was to be taken from all size classes of trees,

with the poorest trees removed first. The aim was

to improve both the volume and quality of the

growing stock. Unmerchantable hardwoods were

treated in the same way as in Method 1. This

treatment was to represent one of the most intensive that could be recommended to a timberland owner.

The results were most interesting. The plots

clearcut to a 6.inch d.b.h. made an amazing

recovery and had an appreciable stocking of pine 6

inches d.b.h. and above in 10 years, together with

many hardwood stems.

Figure 2X- Part of group of foresters including the Regional

Forester and representatives of his staff; the

Director of the Southern Forest Experiment

Station and representatives of his staff; and State

and private foresters who attended an annual 2-

o!ay meeting at the Crossett Experimental Forest

in April 1937. (FS 352513).

Over the first 10 years, board-foot volume

growth was much the best on the selection plots,

but it was also surprisingly good on the treatment

#2 plots, (353 bd. ft. per acre per year, Int. YI inch

scale). Good board-foot growth, of course, was

not expected on the clear cut and shelterwood

plots over the years. Pine reproduction was

prolific on the shelterwood plots (6,310 stems per

acre), and more than adequate on all treatments.

The study indicated that where a pine seed source

is close to areas of as much as 4.5 acres, and where

some treatment is given the hardwoods, timbergrowing possibilities on the area are good. At the

same time, the more intensive treatments paid off

in a big way.

In 1937 we also started the large-scale

Selection Management-Cutting Cycle Study on

the Experimental Forest. In this we hoped to get

some answers to questions such as: can light,

frequent, selection cuttings be made in previously

unmanaged immature, understocked, secondgrowth shortleaf-loblolly pine-upland hardwood

stands? Will this type of management and partial

cutting, when applied to large acreages, permit

the sawmills to be operated profitably on logs of

good size and quality while the badly rundown

stands were rehabilitated and their stocking,

quality, and growth built up? Will frequent

selection cuttings increase growth enough to

make up for the lower logging costs to be expected

from heavier and less frequent cuts? How will

frequent cuttings affect reproduction? Will there

be an appreciable difference in board-foot growth

where the cutting cycle is relatively long or

relatively short? The large-scale study, initiated

in 1937, occupied twenty-four 40-acre compartments, eight of which were cut on a 3-year

cycle, eight on a 6-year, and eight on a g-year

cycle.

The management system, as applied, favored

continuous stand improvement. Within the limits

of the allowable cut, the poorest and most

biologically mature stems were to be marked for

removal at the time of any cycle cut. The system

allowed for a gradual buildup of understocked

stands, accelerated increment on the best trees,

and a gradual increase in the proportion of each

acre that would be growing large, high-value

timber.

A 3-year cutting cycle would mean that the

volume of logs, and other products, removed at

the time of any given harvest cut would be

roughly one-half as much as for areas cut on a 6-

26
year cycle. And only one-third as much as from a

g-year cycle. Costs and returns might, therefore,

be quite different. To get a good measure of this,

an elaborate recordkeeping system was set up.

Changes in stand structure and growth of various

products would be based on loo-percent inventories that would be repeated for each compartment at the end of each cutting cycle. To

determine logging cost differences that might be

present, man-hour and machine-hour costs were

kept by compartment throughout the course of

the study. Such figures were for cutting, skidding, loading, hauling, and overhead. Records on

total volume of logs produced were kept for log

size and log grade. Records on volume of pulpwood, chemicalwood, and other products

produced were also recorded.

A few of the interesting results of the first 24

years of this study may be briefly summarized as

follows:

1. For the quite variable previously unmanaged stands, length of time between harvest

had little effect upon the total yield of high quality

logs produced by the stands.

2. Total pine logs harvested while the stands

were being improved and rebuilt averaged 5,654

bd. ft. (International %-inch scale) per acre, or

236 bd. ft. per acre per year.

3. Additions to the pine log-size growing

stock averaged 4,719 bd. ft. per acre or 197 bd. ft.

per acre per year.

4. Over the 24-year period pine growth in

trees 12 inches in d.b.h. and larger averaged 433

bd. ft. per acre per year.

5. Pine board foot growth was equal to 8.6

percent per year simple interest.

6. Pulpwood yield averaged 1.47 cords per M

bd. ft. of logs grown.

7. Pine reproduction was more than

adequate on most areas although hardwood

sprouts and small hardwood stems, that never

had been treated, were a problem on about 10

percent of the area of study. Treatment of this

brush would be desirable in the near future.

8. The increase in number of pine trees, 4

inches and larger in d.b. h., averaged 36 per acre

over the 24-year period,

Thus, the answer to the major questions that

we had asked at the time the study was started

was “yes” in each case.

FARM FORESTRY STUDIES

About 20 percent of all forest land in the

Crossett Branch territory was owned by farmers

and other small nonindustrial ownerships. The

Figure 24.- Spots such as this werepresent on the Poor Forty when management started in 1937.

Note pine in background. (FS 427241).

27
average per farm was about 30 acres. And,

because there had been little or no market for

products from such woodlands, most farmers

considered it as so much wasteland. At best logs

could be sold from a given area at 40- to 60-year

intervals-and clearcutting of the stands was

common practice.

To get farmers and nonindustrial timberland

owners interested in forestry, some major changes

had to be made. It would be necessary to get rid of

most of the weed and cull trees, and to thin the

thick patches of good trees to give the reserve

stems a chance to grow at an acceptable rate. In

most cases it would be necessary to increase the

growing stock. Perhaps the major necessary

change was to make harvests and to obtain

returns from the tree crop at relatively short

intervals. Could this be done?

Since farmers generally obtained returns from

their row crops at yearly intervals, we decided to

find out if annual returns could also be obtained

from forest farming.

Consequently, one of the better stocked 40-

acre shortleaf-loblolly pine-upland hardwood

areas on the Experimental Forest was selected for

study. Results obtained on such land might well

indicate the possible returns one might get from

woodlands, once they were put in good growing

condition and stocking was built up. This area

was called the “Good Farm Forestry Forty.” The

second area selected for study contained 34 acres

of the same pine-hardwood type as the Good

Forty but was much more typical of the average

farm woodland. It was poorly stocked with pine,

many of which were of poor quality. It also had an

abundance of cull and low-grade hardwoods up to

24 inches in diameter (fig. 24).

Annual harvests began on the Good Forty in

1938 and on the Poor Forty in 1939. To build up

stocking on the latter area, the annual harvest

was limited to approximately 50 percent of growth

for the first 13 years. By that time stocking had

increased to the point that removal of more of the

growth was desirable. Consequently, the annual

cut was gradually increased to a volume nearly

equal to the growth. The annual cut from the

Good Forty was each year roughly equal to the

annual growth (fig. 25).

From 1938 to 1968, 30 annual harvests were

made from the poorly stocked 34-acre tract and 31

were made from the well-stocked area.

The number of pine trees, at the time

Figure 25. -Annual harvest on the Good Farm Forty. Products shown are equivalent to one year’s growth on the well-stocked

and managed area.

28
management started on the understocked area,

averaged 68 per acre in the 4- to la-inch size class

and 17 in the 12.inch and larger class. Total cubic

volume for trees of all sizes averaged 11.5 cords

per acre. This volume included 2,341 board feet

(Doyle) of sawlog size material.

Over the 30-year period, 148 trees per acre

were marked for cutting, 43 of which were of

sawlog size. Over the same period 7,420 bd. ft. of

logs, 12.1 cords of pine pulpwood and 4.7 cords of

hardwood products were removed from each

average acre.

At the end of the 31 years the Poor Forty

contained 145 trees per acre in the 4- to 12-inch

class and 32 in the 12-inch and larger class.

Stocking of pine of all sizes averaged 23.1 cords

per acre, and of this 5,323 bd. ft. was in the

sawlog sizes (Fig. 26).

On the Good Forty, original stocking of pine

trees averaged 102 per acre in the 4- to la-inch

class and 30 in the la-inch and larger class. Cubic

volume of pine trees of all sizes averaged 21.2

cords per acre. This volume included 5,074 bd. ft.

(Doyle) of ’ sawlog size material.

Over the 31-year period of management, 91

trees per acre were marked for cutting, 36 of which

were of sawlog size. Over this period 12,160 bd. ft.

of pine logs, 11.1 cords of pine pulpwood, and 5.7

cords of hardwood products were removed from

each average acre.

After the 31 years of Good Forty contained

119 trees per acre in the 4- to 12-inch class and 30

in the la-inch and larger class. Stocking of pine of

all sizes averaged 23.9 cords per acre, and of this

there was 7,910 bd. ft. in the sawlog sizes (fig.

27).

Over the last 15 years of the study, growth

averaged better than 430 bd. ft. (Doyle) per acre

per year on the Good Forty and 530 on the Poor

Forty.

The results from this study demonstrate the

excellent possibilities of managing small tracts of

loblolly-shortleaf pine under the selection system

for good growth and returns.

These two areas had become the most famous

Farm Forestry Forties in the country.

TRUCK LOGGING

The use of trucks for the hauling of logs from

the woods to the railroads and mills was rapidly

increasing in 1938 (fig. 28). However, the method

of loading these trucks left much to be desired.

Figure 26.- The 24th annual harvest from the Poor Farm

Forty. Volume of products in picture is

equivalent to one year’s growth on the 34-acre

tract-after the stocking of trees had been increased to desirable levels.

When an empty truck returned to the woods, one

of the teams of horses used in skidding was called

in to do the loading. This was very slow and tied

up the truck for upwards of 30 minutes per load.

Al Jacobson, forester for the Crossett Lumber

Company, had some ideas on how to use the truck

more effectively. He drew up plans for, and had

built, some portable heavy-metal trailer-holding

devices on which the log trailer could be quickly

detached from the truck and held in place while

being loaded (fig. 29). In the meantime, as soon as

a given truck was free from its empty trailer, it

could hook on to a previously fully loaded one and

be off to the mill or dumping grounds in a few

minutes (fig. 30). We assisted in the development

and testing of this equipment.

Until the middle of 1938, it was considered

unthinkable to expect that logging trucks ever

could effectively deliver enough logs, and at a

uniform enough rate, to meet the daily demand of

a large sawmill such as at Crossett. The local

foresters and some of the woods supervisory force

thought that they could do this if they only were

given an opportunity to try it. Because the cost of

the railroad logging engines, loaders, log cars,

and railroad personnel (still in use to assure an

even flow of logs to the mill) was so great, it was

decided to give the complete truck operation a

trial at Crossett in 1939. And although there were

some hitches, the use of trucks and an improved

road system made it possible to supply upwards

of 100 M bd. ft. per day directly from the woods to

the mill. Railroad logging was “done” (fig. 31).

29
This was a great day for forestry and good

forest management. It meant that light selection

cuttings could be made from the generally understocked second-growth stands. And although the

harvesting might be in progress at many different

locations, the flow of logs was sufficient to

maintain full-time operation of the mills. It meant

that the light partial cuttings would produce logs

of good average size-ones that were profitable to

the mills. It also meant that the selectively cut

stands could be counted on to produce greater

cuts of good logs at repeated short intervals.

A WAGE INCREASE-A MAJOR PROBLEM

Looking back from today’s vantage point, it is

difficult to imagine that an increase of 5 cents per

hour would present a “problem.” However, when

the Government ordered the pay scale of woods

labor increased from $0.25 to $0.30 per hour, to be

effective on. October 23, 1939, it caused considerable consternation among officials of the

_ southern sawmill and papermill industries. This

was a 20-percent increase and the first wage

adjustment in a long, long time. Many operators

wondered how they would adjust their unit pay

scale and selling prices.

Fortunately, the Southern Station had information available that would permit very acceptable adjustments. Because of the man-hour

woods and mill production cost data obtained on

the Pack Selective Logging Study, we were able

to help the Crossett Lumber Company, International Paper Company, and several other

companies determine what the wage increase

would mean per unit of production and final

product.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

In early 1939 Albin Jacobson, the fourth chief

forester of the Crossett Lumber Company, moved

to Fordyce, Arkansas, to become both mill and

woods superintendent of the Fordyce Lumber

Company. Jake had run into many major woods,

mill, and personnel problems while at Crossett

and had performed brilliantly. He was, to a great

extent, responsible for making the conversion

from railroad clearcutting of virgin timber as a

source of logs for the sawmill to truck logging of

selectively cut second-growth stands. He successfully planned and established the District

System of forest management and control that

has been continued at Crossett to the present day

(but with twice as many districts). The District

System concept and method of operation was later

widely adopted by other large lumber, pulp, and

wood producing companies. Jake also made

numerous and continuous improvements in

methods of operation in the woods and mills.

He was succeeded by Norman Worthington as

chief forester for Crossett. Norm was the fifth

forester employed by the company.

To summarize a bit, by the summer of 1939 we

had largely completed the Pack Selective Logging

and Mill Scale Study and the Stand Improvement

Study. We had made good progress on the installation of the large Methods of Cutting Study,

the equally large 958 acre Cutting Cycle Study,

the Pine Pruning Study, and the Farm Forestry

Forties. This was in addition to the large road and

building program, and the handling of the continuous stream of visitors. Of equal interest was

the fact that, up to 1939, the regular yearly

budget of station funds for Crossett was no

greater than $8,000. This included the salaries

of Rawls and myself. The rest of the needed money for research and construction came from

cooperative funds, relief funds, and donations.

Because money and help were not available,

Rawls and I cruised and marked timber, drove

tractors skidding logs and pulpwood, did much of

the work of establishment on the research studies,

and handled visitors. On the few weekends that

we were not handling visitors, we were usually on

fire detail. Seventy-hour weeks were commonplace. What changes have taken place in the

last 40 years or so!!

A LARGE-SCALE TEST OF EVEN-VERSUS

UNEVEN-AGED MANAGEMENT,

By 1941 most of the land in the 1680 acres of

the original Crossett Experimental Forest was

being used for research studies, a natural area,

an arboretum, or for other scientific purposes. An

additional forest area was needed. After much

discussion and planning, the Crossett Lumber

30
Figure 27. - Annual harvest in 1949 from the Good Forty. Group sitting on logs are (from left to right) Regional Forester Earl

Stone; Chester Davis, head of Federal Reserve Board of St. Louis; Charles Grano, of Crossett Research Center;

Russ Reynolds; Charles Connaughton, Director of Southern Forest Experiment Station; Lyle Watts, Chief Forester

for the U.S. Forest Service; and Hamlin Williston of the Crossett Research Center.

Company leased to the Forest Service an additional 1800 acres of second-growth upland pinehardwood land. This area was to be known as Unit

#2 of the Experimental Forest. The area was

assigned to the Government on a 99-year lease for

the sum total of $1 .OO. The lease specified that the

land and all timber was to continue to be owned

by the Company, and all timber that was to be cut

in the course of studies or otherwise would be

Company property. Another provision specified

that any time that the area was not needed, or

used, for research purposes, the land and timber

would be returned to the company for

management and use.

Although there had been great, and longlasting controversy over the advantages and

disadvantages of even-aged versus uneven-aged,

or selection, management there had never been a

good test of the two silvicultural systems in

similar stands and at the same location. We had

proposed to make such a test in second-growth

shortleaf-loblolly pine-upland hardwood stands.

So that the results would not be subject to

question because of small plot size, we planned to

use 40-acre plots and to carry out the study over a

long period of time. We would use the same

logging and pulpwood production crews on both

even-aged and uneven-aged plots, and apply

those management practices that appeared to

favor each system. Half of each 40-acre plot would

be managed for maximum production of pulpwood

and small logs, and the other half for maximum

yield of large logs with pulpwood a desirable but

secondary product. Cost records in man-hours

and dollars were to be kept for all stages of the

management and harvesting so that results could

be evaluated. This study, plus the pine-hardwood

study mentioned later, was very capably handled

by Charlie Grano, who had come to the station

from the Ouachita National Forest whose headquarters is at Hot Springs, Arkansas.

The study got off to a fine start and gave us a

chance to test an old argument. Some foresters

believed that cuts of logs would be relatively light

per acre under the selection, or uneven-aged

system. Therefore, the logging cost would be

3 1
much greater than under an even-aged system,

where the volume removed at harvest time would

be 5 to 10 times as much. Under the selection

system, harvests of logs and some pulpwood were

to be made every 5 years from a given area, and

the trees marked for cutting would generally be

the larger ones in the stand. Under the even-aged

system, the final harvest would remove all trees of

log size except for the necessary few seed trees.

The selection plots used in the test yielded a

cut of about 1,200 bd. ft. of logs per acre. The

even-aged plots cut to an approximate 12-&h

diameter produced a cut of 6,000 to 8,000 bd. ft.

(Doyle) per acre. C.C.C. boys were used to keep

the daily time, cost, and yield data. The contractor doing the work said “man and boy you

don’t need to do this study to find out which type

of cutting will be cheaper. I can tell you right now

that clearcutting will be cheaper.” Many interested observers had similar thoughts.

But this was not the case. The records showed

beyond question that selection cutting produced

logs that ‘cost considerably less per thousand

board feet to fell, skid, and haul to the mills than

_ those produced from the much heavier cutting on

the even-aged forties.

Because of the many small logs cut, the

average log size from the even-aged areas was

much less than those from the selectively

managed areas, and the cost per thousand board

feet was appreciably greater. Later studies had

similar results, but this was a “shocker” to many

foresters and timberland owners who thought that

cheapness of logging was directly related to

volume cut per acre.

production of new small limbs on the boles of the

oaks. This research indicated that if upland oak

stands were thinned too severely, feathering

became a problem.

FARM FORESTRY STUDY DAYS

On November 2, 1942, in cooperation with the

Arkansas Extension Service, the Crossett

Lumber Company, and others, we held the first in

a long series of annual Farm Forestry Study Days

on the Experimental Forest. For this and subsequent Study Days, we made the annual harvests on the Good and Poor Farm Forestry

Forties and stacked the products on the side of the

road at each Forty for our guests to inspect. Thus,

visitors could see the large volume of logs,

pulpwood, and other products that could be

harvested annually from second-growth shortleafloblolly pine stands that were managed on the

selection system. A pamphlet described this

study and gave information on returns. It also

described some of the other research work, results

of which would be applicable to the small timberland owners. Such studies were visited on a

tour of the forest and surrounding areas. A noon

barbeque at the picnic grounds, with talks by one

or more well-known persons interested in farm

forestry were other interesting events of the day.

From the first, these annual “Day’s” were well

attended and were a fine means of getting timberland owners interested in management of their

forest properties.

PINE-HARDWOOD MANAGEMENT

RESEARCH

FIRE IN THE FORESTS

Another important and interesting study that

was started on the new Unit #2 of the Experimental Forest shortly after acquisition was

one on growth, timber quality, reproduction, and

returns from areas growing pure pine at one

extreme to good red and white oak at the other

extreme. In between were mixed stands of good

oak and good pine growing together. The effect of

pruning the oak was measured, as was the effect

of size of opening on “feathering,” or the

Wildfire in the woods was most certainly a

major deterrent to the early attempts to practice

forest management in the South. This was particularly true for the shortleaf-loblolly pine forests

of southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana. As

was pointed out earlier, in the 1920’s and 1930’s

most people thought that the forests had little or

no value once the virgin timber had been cut.

3 2
c

Figure 28.- Team skidding pine log into position for loading onto truck by means of chain cross-haul. This was the standard

method of loading log trucks in the woods during most of the 1930’s and 40's. (FS425846).

Most thought of land with trees as “unimproved

land,” and the only way to obtain prosperity for a

given area was to remove the trees and establish

row-crop farms.

Most lumber companies in the area, including

the Crossett Company, were glad to sell their

cutover land to those who would establish or

enlarge their farms. Consequently, when

management of the forests for another crop of

trees was seriously considered, the area was

dotted with 20- to loo-acre family type row-crop

clearings. Most farmers had from a few to many

head of cows, horses, mules, and pigs. The

development of improved, or unimproved

pastures for that matter, for grazing of these

animals was almost unheard of. Livestock was

turned out to graze in the surrounding

“slashings” and along the roadsides. To keep

these areas open and free of brush and trees, it

was customary to burn over the forest area

surrounding the farms. Of course, it was also

necessary to burn to “keep down” the crop of

ticks, chiggers, and snakes. In case some readers

might wonder about the roaming livestock eating

up the row crops, it might be well to report that

the farms generally had fences-but these were

constructed to keep the livestock “out” rather

than “in.”

In any event, during the spring fire season,

which extended from about February 15 until the

grass and other vegetation greened up, and during

the fall season, from about October 1 until the

winter rains started in December, woods fires

would be commonplace. Many would be severe,

and help needed to extinguish some of them just

would not be available. It was very dry during the

fall fire season of 1933 at the time that I and the 5

CCC boys were cruising and marking the first unit

of the East Block virgin area for selection cutting.

Fires became so general and bad that Mr.

Wilcoxon, woods superintendent for the Crossett

Lumber Company, asked me if I would take my

crew and help out on some of them. Since the

Company was paying the station for my work and

the CCC program was committed to woods fire

protection, we agreed to help.

The first fire that we were sent to was

estimated to be 300 acres in size. At the beginning

we were the first and only fire fighters working it.

Looking back it seems impossible that we could

get control of most of that fire. In those days

there were no fire plows, no radios, no tractors, no

airplanes. Our fire fighting equipment consisted

of six fire rakes and two flaps. We had no backfiring torch, so when backfiring was needed, one

of the men would rake up a small amount of dry

grass on the tines of his rake, set it on fire, and

scatter it along the fireline that had been prepared

by the rakers. This would have to be repeated over

and over again-often working in thick smoke-if

we were trying to stop the head of a given fire.

One can only imagine how tiring this continuous

33
job of rake, rake, rake was-especially where

there were vines and brush. With small crews and

little equipment, about the only chance one had to

stop most fires, once they had become 5 acres or

more in size, was to work a considerable distance

ahead of the fire and backfire from woods and

county roads, and such natural breaks as streams,

fields, and hardwood bottoms.

In bad fire seasons, such as the fall of 1933,

the countryside would become so smoky that

visibility would drop to only a few 100 feet. Under

such conditions, fire towers would become useless

for detection purposes. New fires would be found

only by driving down the few existing roads or by

reports from people living in the area.

Figure 29.-Detachable log loading system developed by A.

G. Jacobson. Trailer could be loaded while the

truck was on its way to the mill with another

load.

Under such smoky conditions, it was not at all

unusual to have fires become 100 acres or more in

size before anyone knew about them. The worse

part of the fall 1933 fire season lasted for nearly 2

weeks after we started to help fight fire. During

this period each fire that we were sent to was from

50 to 300 acres in size when we arrived. To make a

bad situation more difficult, there were many

“burners” in the territory. These people could be

counted on to set a string of fires up to a half-mile

or more in length on bad days, and to immediately

set new fires as soon as the fire crew left. They

even sent word to the fire protection force that

they would set fire on a certain day and in a

certain location. Most of these “burners” were

good woodsmen and were hard to catch in the act

of setting the fires, especially when they rode

horses and kept off roads. Adding to the problem

was the fact that, when the burners were caught,

the courts either turned them loose, or fined them

$10 at most.

THE BEGINNING OF STATE FORESTRY

IN ARKANSAS

As of 1930 Arkansas was one of the largest

timber producing States in the Nation. At the

same time it was the only State that had a major

forest fire protection problem but no forestry

department. The various lumber companies who

wished to protect the regrowth on their cutover

timberlands had to provide protection entirely on

their own.

The 1931 session of the Arkansas Legislature

passed Act 234, which created the State Forestry

Commission. However, neither the 1931 nor the

1933 session made an appropriation, so the

Commission could not become active. Finally

Governor J. M. Futrell decided to act and asked

for a public subscription of $5,000. He received

$7,805, and the Arkansas State Forestry Commission came into being. It employed Charles A.

Gillett as State Forester. The State was broken

down into units, with each unit under the

supervision of a district forester. Curtis Coffman

was in charge of Unit #l with headquarters at

Hamburg. J. 0. Lee supervised Unit #4 at

Warren, and Louis Ramsey supervised Unit #3 at

Fordyce. It was generally understood that, for

successful management of the forest, fire

protection was the first consideration. As of June

30, 1934, the Commission had about 2.5 million

acres under “intensive” protection from fire, all of

which was in southern Arkansas. Most of the

effort was made possible by timberland owners

who contributed two cents per acre per year, for a

total of about $26,000.

Establishment of the Forestry Commission

did not alter the fact that there were few fire

towers. Communications were very poor, and the

fires were to be fought by local “guards” using

fire rakes and swatters.

34
Figure 30.- Truck backing into position to pick up a load of

pine logs that had been loaded on the trailer while

the truck had taken another load of logs to the

mill.

Fortunately for forestry, perhaps the biggest

boost to the early efforts at establishing timber

_ management in the region was the Emergency

Conservation Work Program, the CCC. A 200-

man camp was established in Ashley Countyfirst east of Crossett, then moved to Hamburg.

Under this work program, only work of a

public nature could be done. However, the law

permitted work on private land which the state

had agreed to protect under the provisions of the

Clark-McNary Law. It was this large amount of

available manpower- with fire rakes-that kept

the losses to wildfire within reasonable limits. Of

course, the CCC’s accomplished much other very

valuable work directly relating to forest

management. They built steel lookout towers;

telephone lines to establish communications

between towers, and between district

headquarters and the towers; and constructed

many miles of truck trails and many bridges.

Because of lack of funds, the CCC camp at

Hamburg was discontinued in late 1935. What a

blow! Arrangements were made to obtain help

from the CCC camp at Monticello, which had been

sponsored by the Soil Conservation Service, but

such assistance was always uncertain. Sometimes

the crew would have orders to return to camp at a

certain time regardless of progress-or lack

thereof-on a given fire. Often the companies had

to use their woods, bridge, and road crews to help.

Many small timberland owners also helped.

In the spring of 1936, District Forester

Coffman moved from Unit #l at Hamburg to a

new Unit #14 at Hardy, Arkansas. J. C. (Custer)

Ross replaced Coffman at Hamburg.

A major step toward freeing forest fire control

from almost complete dependence on the fire rake

was made during 1936 at Crossett. Based on ideas

conceived by Glen Durell, assistant State

Forester in charge of fire control, Ross, with the

help of a good mechanic and welder, developed a

completely new tractor-powered fire-trail plow. It

differed from those in limited use elsewhere in the

country in that the plow was attached to the front

and was pushed rather than pulled by the tractor.

With the plow in this position, the operator had a

clear view both of the plow and the country over

which it would pass. It, therefore, relieved the

driver of the strain of frequently taking his eyes

off the terrain ahead to manipulate the plow

behind.

The first time that a tractor-plow was used on

a fire in Arkansas was on the “Honeycutt Barn”

fire north of Crossett in August 1936. The plow

showed great promise, and with some

modifications soon began to perform excellently.

Figure 31.-First truck trail constructed by the Crossett

Lumber Co. The trails permitted frequent light

cuts of pulpwood, chemicalwood, sawlogs and

other products.

35
Once the special trucks and truck beds, on which

the tractors could be self-loaded and selfunloaded, were constructed, these fire plows

became the “work-horses” of the fire protection

forces. When called for they could arrive at a fire

as quickly as a crew of men, and could do much

more work without getting tired. The main

drawback was the lack of funds with which to

purchase more than a plow or two for each Unit.

So, the use of fire rakes was standard practice for

many years after the fireplow came into the

picture.

dark to watch for smokes. On one such late afternoon in the spring of 1934, I was in a car

parked on the highway, when I saw a big puff of

black smoke about a half-mile away and not too

far off one of our newly-constructed forest roads. I

quickly cranked up the car’s engine and dashed to

the area, but when I got there, no smoke was to be

seen. I went back to my parking spot, and soon

the smoke appeared over the treetops again. I

went back and, could find neither fire nor smoke.

By then it was dark so I went home.

FIRES AND THE CROSSETT

RESEARCH CENTER

Crossett Lumber Company officials once

admitted that one reason they wanted the

Government to locate in the general vicinity of

what is now the Crossett Experimental Forest

was because of the fire problem in the area. Three

suspected woods burners lived in the area, and it

was thought that the presence of Federal people

would greatly reduce incendiarism.

In any event, at the time that the Crossett

Research Center and the Crossett Experimental

Forest were established, fire protection of the area

was considered a must for research to be effective.

During work hours we had a good supply of

manpower for any fire fighting job that might

show up. But after work hours-nights, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays-the detection and

much of the fire fighting job fell upon the

shoulders of Ike Rawls and myself. If a fire was in

progress and it was too large for one or two men to

handle, we could call upon some of the W.P.A.

foremen-if we could get word to them. But most

of them lived far from the Experimental Forest

and most could not be contacted by phone. So we

did our best to keep every fire small. This meant

constant watch of the area when the local

firetower was not manned, including driving the

roads and trails at night when winds were high

and/or humidity was low. Hundreds of nights we

made regular inspections of the area until midnight or later, looking for “lights” and sniffing for

fresh smoke.

Up until the time houses were built at station

headquarters, one of us remained on the area until

Figure 32. - Custer Ross, developer of the push type fire plow,

and the use of planes for forest fire protection.

Several days passed before we found the

answer to the mystery. In a sheltered and shaded

spot on a small intermittent creek that ran

through the area, we found an old copper boiler,

two washtubs and a dipper, plus a good supply of

fat pine knots. One of our neighbors had a private

still where he was making “white lightning.” The

big black smoke that I had seen was caused when

the “brewmaster” had put some more pine knots

on the fire. When he heard the car coming toward

him, he quickly grabbed a pail of water and

doused the fire. When I left the general area, he

fanned the fire into life again and threw on some

more pine knots.

After my second trip down to this area, he

apparently decided that I was a persistent cuss,

so he took most of his good equipment and moved

to a safer location.

With the increased attention, and money,

given to the reduction of forest area burned by fire

came the need for an improved fire danger meter

for determining the amount of fire danger on a

given day. Starting in 1941, Crossett researchers

began a series of tests on various indicator

materials for use in accurately determining

36
moisture content of grassy and woody fuels. Over

the years, many improvements were made in such

meters, but every time higher authority attempted to establish “universal” meters it was

always found that the meters needed to be adjusted for local conditions. This subject at times

developed great controversies, and never was

settled to everyone’s satisfaction.

THE BIRTH OF AERIAL PATROL

The fireplow, danger meters, and an expansion

of the telephone system served well in reducing

acreage losses from fire. Yet, protection efforts

were seriously hampered during those periods

when smoke from many fires reduced visibility to

5 miles or less. Such conditions developed quite

often, and when they did the towers were almost

useless. ‘.

The use of planes for detection on hazy and

foggy days was discussed as early as 1939, but

planes were hard to come by and had never been

used for this purpose. District Forester Custer

Ross should be given most of the credit for the

introduction of the airbird for detection purposes

(fig. 32). With approval of State Forester Lang

and the State Commander of Civil Air Patrol, he

made arrangements with the C.A.P. unit located

at El Dorado, Arkansas, to furnish a plane and

pilot to make some test flights over the Ashley

and Drew County areas on days with low

visibility. The pilots of the planes were also the

observers and made a note of the general location

of each smoke found. Upon landing back at ‘the

base in El Dorado, they would call the Crossett

Division Forester and give him their report.

Location of fires were tied in to some well-known

landmark such as “about 3 miles southeast of

Crossett.”

Use of the Civil Air Patrol planes for fire

detection on bad days was continued until 1944,

when A. E. Jennings became manager of the

Crossett Airport. At that time, the Forestry

Commission made arrangements with him to fly

one of his two planes on days when visibility was

low. He was not acquainted with land lines and

land descriptions, so it was necessary at first to

have a “spotter” fly with the pilot. The spotter

was usually District Forester Ross.

This new detection tool immediately proved

very valuable, not only for locating fires on days

of low visibility but also for directing crews on

large fires. Up until the introduction of the planes,

communications on going fires had to be by

“runners” or “on the ground” inspection. Thus,

the man in charge of the suppression forces often

had to more or less “work in the dark.” Much

additional acreage was lost, because it took many

precious minutes to get word of a “breakover” to

the fire protection forces working on another part

of the fireline.

The one stumbling block in the use of aerial

detection was the fact that the observer in the

plane had no means of instant communication

with people on the ground. In the first few

months, the pilot had to land and telephone the

location of new fires or other information to the

ground forces.

This bottleneck was solved, to a great extent,

by the use of empty quart oil-cans and empty ice

cream cartons with streamers attached. The

observer in the air would write his message on a

piece of paper, put it in the container and drop the

missile to a waiting crew. It was not long before

fire protection forces elsewhere adopted this

technique.

Short-wave portable radios came into being in

the mid-1940’s, and by 1947 radio networks with

fixed stations proved extremely valuable in the

fire-protection battle.

CONTROLLED BURNING

In the early days of the new forestry

movement, it was universally shouted that all

fires in the woods were bad. But, for some time,

naval stores (turpentine and rosin) operators in

the longleaf and slash pine areas of the Gulf South

had been burning over large areas of their

holdings each year to make sure the wildfires

would not wipe out their operations.

After several large wildfires did tremendous

damage to their stands, many large (and small)

timberland owners in the Southeast also began

using “controlled” fires, during safe periods, to

reduce the amount of burnable material on the

ground (the rough) and to keep the stands “open”

and relatively free of brush and vines.

37
Largely because of pressure brought by H. H.

Chapman and a few others who claimed that

controlled fire should also be used in the shortleafloblolly types, the Forest Service began many

studies to determine how fire affected the forest.

These studies included the effect on soil, brush

control, damage to existing trees, release of soil

nutrients, and other factors. Working under the

leadership of Al Bickford, who headed up fire

research at the Southern Station, the Crossett

Branch began a whole series of controlled burning

studies starting in the spring of 1941.

Among the early results from these studies

was the finding that successful controlled burns

required about the same fuel and weather conditions as those found on the average hot uncontrolled fire; a good supply of dry grass and/or

needles and leaves, low relative humidity, and a

good steady wind. Under such conditions the fires

will kill the aboveground portions of most small

hardwoods and vines. However, except for

dangerous summer fires, or those that burn

during very dry periods, few of the hardwood

rootstocks were killed. A great many recovered

and from one to a dozen new stems would show up

for each stem “killed.” Even a number of repeat

fires in later years did not kill a majority of the

original rootstocks.

The controlled burn, or repeat burns, did,

however, retard the recovery of the hardwood

brush. When a pine seed source was available in

the first year or two after the burn, and the

overstory was not too dense, a satisfactory stand

of pine seedlings did become established and beat

out much of the recovering hardwoods for a

dominant place in the new stand. Sometimes the

pine seeded in to such a dense stand that it would

likely stagnate before the stems would reach a

merchantable size for any product. Thus, removal

of the surplus pine and the sprouting and competing hardwoods was a likely necessity.

The controlled burns usually did not kill

hardwoods above 2 inches in diameter and where

desirable these had to be deadened by other

means.

Most fires that were effective in killing the

above-ground portions of the unwanted hardwoods killed most of the pine seedlings and the

pine saplings up to about 15 feet in height. Thus,

any area to be burned that contained patches of

young pine that were to be saved, had to be

protected by fire lines.

Controlled burning of older pine stands on

days when temperatures were high and humidity

was low resulted in much crown needle scorch and

a appreciable reduction in tree diameter and

volume growth.

COOPERATIVE RESEARCH

Regular Federal funds for an expanded

program of forest research continued to be nearly

nonexistent in the 1940’s. To stimulate more

effort, the assistant chief for forest research in the

Washington office urged field Branch Station

Leaders to encourage additional cooperative funds

from timber owning companies. It was promised

that any private funds so obtained would be

matched by additional Federal research funds.

John Watzek, an owner and director of the

Crossett Lumber Company, also responded to our

request by offering a sizeable sum of Company

money to finance a program on genetics research

on loblolly pine.

Such a program began at the Crossett Branch

in 1951. This was one of the first major genetics

projects in the South. Much of the work was on

large-scale loblolly pine seed source tests, and on

selection and breeding of “plus” trees. Roland

Schoenike headed up the program in the beginning and was followed by Hoy Grigsby. Wonderful cooperation in the form of manpower, land

and timber, equipment, and plantation areas was

provided, not only by the Crossett Company but

the Fordyce Lumber Company, Southern Lumber

Company, International Paper Company,

Continental Can Company, and many other

companies and individuals.

About this same time, the need for information on water requirements of managed

stands of loblolly and shortleaf pine became

apparent. We had many questions. For example:

What was the water holding capacity of the

various soils in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and

Mississippi? How much was required for

maximum growth of the stands? How much of the

available water was used by dense stands of

understory brush? Would fertilizers produce an

appreciable increase in growth of young and

middle-aged stands?

3 8
Again we sought help from the various timber

owning companies in south Arkansas and north

Louisiana, and they came through with funds.

Among the companies contributing cooperative

funds were Deltic Land and Timber Company,

International Paper Company, Ozan Lumber

Company, and Fordyce Lumber Company.

This line of research, also was the first in the

region, and yielded much valuable practical information at an early data. Robert Zahner headed

up this research for several years.

It was found that the silt loam and silty clay

loam soils found in much of the pinelands of

southeast Arkansas and northeast Louisiana

would hold up to 14 inches of water in the top 4

feet of soil. Some of the sandy soils would hold

only 3 to 6 inches in what was considered to be the

root zone.

A reasonably well-stocked stand of trees

would use about 2 inches of water per month at

the beginning of the growing season. This use

increased rapidly to 7 inches (if available) by the

first of July and continued at a high rate through

Figure 33.-A sudden-sawlog study plot thinned to 100 trees

per acre at age 9.

the rest of the summer. Late spring rainfall, as

well as precipitation throughout the summer and

fall is usually less than the stand of trees can use

so by early May the trees start drawing water out

of their root zone “water tank.” By the last of

June available stored water is largely used up.

Thus subsequent diameter and volume growth

depends upon current precipitation for the rest of

the growing season. Heavily stocked stands

rarely grow more than half of their potential

volume of wood because of lack of water.

Any green growing thing in the forest needs

water to live and develop. This includes not only

the desirable trees but also the cull trees, hardwood brush, vines, surplus reproduction, and

surplus trees of all sizes. All draw water out of the

limited amount in the “water tank.”

In one case it was found that reducing the

volume of growing stock trees from 100 or more

square feet per acre, to 50-60 square feet allowed

the trees to add growth all through the growing

season instead of for only a portion of it. This was

true because there were many fewer stems

drawing water from the limited amount in the root

zone supply. Likewise studies proved that

reducing or eliminating a large proportion of the

dense understory brush would result in a large

increase in the growth of the overstory pine.

Fertilizer studies indicated that nitrogen was

the one element whose addition would produce the

greatest growth response from the pine timber

stands in the Crossett Research Center territory.

But the response varied from one soil type to

another and it was temporary. Usually increased

growth could be expected for only 3 years.

Younger stands had greater responses to fertilizer

applications than stands of older trees.

Considering how much fertilizer had to be

applied to have an appreciable effect on growth

and the high cost of the application, the practice

was not practical at the time.

THE “SUDDEN SAWLOG” STUDY

Another study that was a Crossett Branch

“first” was the “Sudden Sawlog” study with

loblolly pine. The generally accepted criteria for

full, or normal, stocking of managed stands in the

39
earlier years was always 120 or more square feet of

basal area per acre. Such stocking might well

produce the maximum amount of cordwood

growth per acre, but the diameter growth of individual trees was slow and the stands often had

to reach 40-60 years of age before an appreciable

number of stems would contain usable volumes

of’sawtimber. Even in the earlier years, the value

of a cubic foot of wood in a sawlog was much

greater than the same cubic foot in trees of

pulpwood size. Thus, it seemed reasonable to

assume that, if the planted or natural stands

could be thinned severely so that there would be

very little competition between trees, for soil

moisture and sunlight, the trees would reach

sawlog size at a much earlier age. It was very

likely that, with additional thinning, the return in

dollars per acre per year would be appreciably

more for the heavily thinned than the “fully

stocked’ stand over any reasonable number of

years

In a 1954 study to test such possibilities, a

fully stocked plantation (6 x 6 feet) was thinned

back to 100 trees per acre at 9 years of age (fig.

33). This was compared to a treatment in which

the stand was thinned back to 85 square feet of

basal area (712 trees) at age 12. The plots in the

second treatment were thinned back to 86 square

feet at the end of every 3 years. The heavily

thinned plots were also given additional thinnings

as diameter growth slowed or crown competition

developed.

Other treatments were included in the study to

see if leaving more than the 100 crop trees for a

few years would boost total yields. But such

treatments were only a slight variation of the

original objective.

Trees on the heavily thinned plots averaged

from 16 to 17 inches in diameter at 30 years of age.

The trees on the plots thinned in a marmer that

would be considered heavy thinning (to 86 square

feet of basal area) at the time, averaged 11 inches

in diameter at 36 years,

Sawtimber yields, including material removed

in thinnings, averaged approximately 10,000 bd.

ft. per acre (Doyle) at stand age 30 for the plots

originally given the very heavy thirmings. This

compared to about 3,200 bd. ft. per acre for the

plots repeatedly thinned back to 86 square feet.

Total yields in cubic feet to age 30, including

material removed in thinnings, for the plots

thinned back to 100 trees per acre averaged approximately 3,200 cubic feet per acre as compared

to nearly 4,700 cubic feet for the plots given a

more standard type of thinning. However, the

greater yields in cubic feet would be of greatest

interest to owners of pulp and paper companies,

because a large proportion of the production could

only be sold as pulpwood, at a much lower rate per

cubic foot than material in trees that were large

enough to produce logs.

At $150 per M bd, ft. (Doyle) the heavily

thinned plots produced a return of about $1,800

per acre at 30 years.

The value of the 3,200 bd. ft. produced on the

less heavily thinned plots was appraised at $100

per M bd. ft. because the logs averaged much

smaller in size than on the 100 tree per acre plots.

The total value of the logs produced were about

$320 per acre at age 30. However, these plots

would have produced about 40 cords of pulpwood,

in addition to the logs, and this at $6 per cord

would have been worth about $240 per acre. Thus,

the total value of the production would have been

$566 per acre or only about 31 percent of the value

received for the “Sudden Sawlog” plots.

IN CONCLUSION

Many other interesting and important forestry

related events took place in the south Arkansasnorth Louisiana area during the 1930.1955

“Beginning of Forestry Years.” Many other

important research studies that were first in their

field were undertaken at the Crossett Experimental Forest and on company timberlands

during this same period. Many other U.S. Forest

Service and Arkansas Forest Commission personnel and many individuals- from Chairmen of

the Board down to field hands- helped in getting

forestry launched in those early and formative

years. To attempt to name them, and their

contribution, would require much space and

invariably some would be overlooked. So, to all

who should have been mentioned but were not,

my apologies.

It was a most interesting period.

4 0

Reynolds, R. R.

1980. The Crossett Story: The beginning of forestry in

sour;hern Arkansas and northern Louisiana. U.S. Dep.

Agric. For. Serv. Gen. Tech. Rep. SO-32,40 p. South. For.

Exp. Stn., New Orleans, La.

A history of the establishment and early work of the Crossett

Experimental Forest and Research Center.