Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1884-03-28
DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS.
The Delaware Valley Swept Clean
The Hemlock.Leather Business Ru-
ined-Blind, Unchecked Vandalism.

DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS.
The Delaware Valley Swept Clean
The Hemlock.Leather Business Ru- |
ined-Biind, Unchecked Vandalism.
HoNEsDALE, Wayne Co., Pa.-Fifty
years ago the counties of Wayne and
Pike, in this state. and Delaware and
Sullivan in New York state, produced
one-eighteenth of the sawed lumber
of the two states, and one-eighty third
of that produced in the United States.
1t was all run to market by RATS on
the Delaware river. The forests of
these four Delaware valley counties
were as dense then as any in the yet
uninhabited far west, and yielded the
choicest and largest specimens of the
pine. These forests, being traversed
for miles by navigable tributaries of
the Delaware, in each of the counties
named, gave easy and cheap thorough
fares from the remoter forests to the
banks of the main stream, which, in
turn, afforded an uninterrupted and
free highway to Philadelphia and in
termediate markets. These facilities
for transportation attracted the atten-
ton of lumber operators more than a
century ago, and the onslaughts of
the woodsman on the forests have
been fierce and persistent ever since.
The dense pine wilderness that the
first settlers found in the valley and
its adjacent region. tributary to 1t,
withstood the inroads of the lumber
man for seventy years.
The plebeian hemlock was for more
than half a century considered q
worthless interloper in the domain of
its cousin, the princely pine, but to-
day it is commanding higher price
in the market than which much of the
best quality of pine brought in the
early days of numbering in the val
ley.
1t is estimated that tho pine forests
of the four Delaware Valley counties
produced IL, 900, 600, 600 feet of lum-
Der before they were exhausted. This
was cut, sawed, RATED, and delivered
in Philadelphia and other markets at
an average price of $40 per 1000 feet,
thus yielding an aggregate return to
the operators of $12, 900, 900. If by any
possibility these forests could have
been preserved for fifty years their
value would have had at least four
fold increase. Pine lumber is now
imported for consumption, where
these great forests once stood, at
cost of $50 per 1, 900 feet.
The pine numbering business
virtually came to an end in the Della
ware Valley in 1850, although for ten
or fifteen years thereafter it continued
to some extent in a few favored To-
calitIes. A tract of pine timber is
now curiosity ia the region. With
the extension of the pine, the hem
lock, witch had been gradually assert
ing its Importance for several years,
became the staple product of the Della
ware lumber regions. The virgin
hemlock forests of the four counties
were still more dense than the pine
had been, the trees being of enormous
girth and height.
In the palmy days of pine lumber
ing there were no circular saw mills,
but only primitive upright mills. The
lock dynasty, the first .one having
been erected in this country thirty
five years ago by the late G. G. Muir
ray, of Narrowsburg, Sullivan Coua-
ty, N. Y. Others rapidly followed
until there were scores of them, equal
to the task of reducing so, 900 feet of
logs into boards each day. The re-
suit has been a much more rapid ex-
haustion of the hemlock than that
which followed the attacks on the
pine. There is to-day but small area
of original hemlock timber standing
in the valley, and that is in the hands
of two or three individual operators.
Operations in the hemlock woods have
been especially active, during the last
twenty-five years. Such was the
case with the pine numbering, more
timber having been cut and manufac
tured during the last twenty years of
the business than the fifty previous
ones. Fifteen years ago the
hemlock lumber sent down the
Delaware river amounted to an aver
age of over 100, 900, 900 feet. But mar
kets had been opened up by railroads
which took as much as so, 200, 900 feet
more from the region. In 1870 Wayne
county alone produced over 100, 000,-
900 feet, Rats were originally run
from Delhi, on the west branch of the
Delaware; but it has been many years
since any have started above Walton,
and few have been run from that
point during the last ten years. The
east branch drains what was decade
ago primitive wilderness in Sulliran
aud Delaware counties, but which is
now but little better than vast field
of stumps or tracts of second rate tim
ber
For ten years, with the excep ton
of the last three, the price obtain ed
for hemlock has been barely sufficient
to pay for the cost of production; but
the work of stripping the forests has
never ceased for day. To an out
slider this naturally seems a wanton
waste not only of money but material,
but the lumbermen claim that they
have had no other course open to
them, because the bark on immense
tracts of timber had been purchased
by tanners, who, knowing no other
use for the hemlock, and caring moth
ing for the state of the lumber mar
ket, felled the trees under their con-
tracts and stripped them of their bark.
ltS blulUCI ouIC lClI1l duu DCtltu
soon becomes unmarketable if left "
ing in the woods. This sale of the
bark on standing timber did more to
demoralize the lumber business of the
Delaware, and to hasten the denuda-
ton of the rivers hills and tributary
banks, than the most savage demands
of the ravenols saw mills throughout
the valley could have possibly effect
ed. But with the destruction of the
hemlock the tanning business dies too,
and what was once the leading tan
ming region in the Union is now of
very slight Importance in that indus
try. Wayne county only few years
ago was the second largest leather
producing tannery then in the world.
Most of the leading establishments in
Wayne, Sullivan, and Pike counties
have closed for want of bark.
That the hemlock forests of the
Delaware Valley arc exhausted is
well testified to by comparison be-
tween the foregoing figures of the
rafting operations of few years ago
with those of last year, when, under
unusually favorable freshets, the
runs were but 80 600, 600 feet; of which
more than one, third was run by one
IT III